The Hamlet Fire

Starred review from July 31, 2017
Cheap food comes at a significant cost, writes Simon (Everything but the Coffee), professor of history at Temple University, in this multidimensional volume about a fatal 1991 fire at a chicken processing plant in North Carolina. At Imperial Food Products in the quiet town of Hamlet, 25 people died after a “hose came loose and launched into a wild dance, spewing flammable oil-based Chevron 32 hydraulic fluid in every direction.” A blaze erupted in the building, which lacked functioning fire sprinklers. Simon describes Hamlet as a town whose fortunes had shifted as factory jobs became scarce throughout the rural South and low-skilled workers became easily replaceable. Imperial owners Emmett and Brad Roe, whose business was “mostly cheap food,” and other similarly negligent employers benefited from lax government oversight, particularly of labor regulations. Though criminal charges and civil lawsuits were later filed, litigation could never erase the trauma that families and survivors endured, as Simon makes clear. He connects the disaster in Hamlet to increasing consumer demand for cheap goods and cites disasters in other industries also driven by low prices. The Hamlet tragedy was not an isolated incident, Simon reminds readers, but part of a wider system of profit-driven labor exploitation.