How this Oklahoma Town Became Completely Uninhabitable
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
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Video written by Amy Muller
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![АЛАУДИНОВ у Скабеевой: эти их ВСУ нас НЕ ДОГОНЯТ 😁 [Пародия]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/an0anqU4WGQ/mqdefault.jpg)
As an inhabitant of Twitch, i already knew chat was garbage
Chat is highly toxic and continual exposure can cause permanent brain damage
I can’t believe Sam finally gave me a reason to say pneumonoultrasilicovolcanoconiosis
chat gave me cancer
@@Andrewdeankyou said it wrong, it's pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
You mean Twicher, right? 😏
Sam from Wendover, please don't send Amy into the uninhabitable city of Picher in Oklahoma
Sam from Wendover can't hear you, only Sam from HAI
You can go there very easily
Sam from jet laglaga
Nice try, Amy
but do sent her to Big Brutus
Chat killed the town
Common Chat L.
F's in the Chat for Oklahoma 😪
@@xp8969 Lead and Heavy Metals too
CHAT! >:(
real chad move
Hi Sam!
I really appreciate Amy dressing up as a giant gorilla and posing for pictures in an industrial wasteland. She deserves a raise!
She needs to compete on Jet Lag The Game sometime. Especially if they can do a game that can have more than two teams.
wrgg
@@tannerwilson4843Like hide and seek?
PICHER! One thing not mentioned: The town of Treece, Kansas, was separated from Picher by... the establishment of Oklahoma in 1907. The state line cut it off, so it became first North Picher, then Treece. Because of the way EPA has regions, Kansas was in a different region than Oklahoma, so residents of Treece were not offered a buyout when Picher was because one region didn't know what the other was doing. The EPA later flew some high-ranking guys out (I covered this hilarious event for a local newspaper) and were convinced to offer Treece residents a buyout, too. Like Picher, Treece no longer exists.
Also, I work for USDA now, and Sam has used our/my team's products/graphs/charts for several recent videos. It's always exciting to share that other people see and share our work.
Awesome comment
Treece was smaller and not as close to the big chat piles in Picher as well as not being undermined. The EPA originally wanted to scrape all the soil off the surface and see if they could keep the town. Ultimately everybody saw Picher getting buyouts and the tide shifted.
There's also a few smaller sites in Missouri (north of Joplin) that are part of the Tar Creek Superfund site with Picher, Treece, and some places near Galena and Baxter Springs, KS.
The separation would date back to the foundation of Kansas Territory in 1854, since its southern boundary is exactly the same as the OK - KS boundary today, which is simply the 37th parallel north.
Why did he call it chat and not waste rock or tailings?
Most of the members of the Quapah Nation were opposed to mining in Picher from the very beginning. The mining company sued tribe members and had the courts declare them legally incompetent, forcing them into contracts to lease their land.
Hooray white men! (sarcasm)
Really this is story is all about how terribly mistreated the native americans were
wake up babe, corporations made by white guys harmed the natives again
To be fair, I think pretty much anyone resident on the land would be opposed to a lead and zinc mine.
yeah it kind of rubs me the wrong way to have this on HAI with a lot of this context removed. the topic deserves more respect
Amy is a great writer. Great episode Amy. You deserve a raise of at least 11%
nice try, amy...
I agree. Sam from Wendover, you should give Amy a significant raise.
zero times 1.11 is still zero, I fear
Half as Habitable: A new channel where Sam goes to places he isn't likely to survive
More like where Sam sends Amy to places she isn't likely to survive
@@vincentgrass6531 Exactly
@@vincentgrass6531HAH: Amy goes to the Chernobyl reactor case and goes inside
@@LeafBoye”Are we at least going to wait for the war to end?”
“What do you think, Amy?”
@@RobotAndRobot Isn't the fighting like 500+ km away from Chernobyl?
I was a freshman in high school living in Kansas while this was going on, neighboring town Treece just over the OK border was also affected, and I will never forget this being the eye opening reason I realized none of my classmates watched the news.
I was on the computer in the school library and the science teacher asked a class of seniors about this story, none of them knew about it. I was sitting there silently fuming because it technically wasn't my class. the next morning the same teacher talked to our freshman class about it and again, nobody else knew what she was talking about, but at least I got to say it this time lol.
it was truly one of those "lived experience" moments where you realize the way you grew up isn't the same as the way everyone else grew up. I'd always watched the morning news before school, since elementary, it was basically a ritual for me, and I assumed other people my age did the same thing but then this came up and I realized I was the weird one 😂
You don't still watch the news daily do you?
What a strange way to learn you have autism.
Used to live there as a very young child until my parents decided that raising a child next to giant piles of lead piles was a bad idea and moved.
Great parents you have
"Giant piles of lead piles" may be a typo, but it makes them sound even bigger.
Education is important
@@GuenniKurtiIt the Big kinda big
@@GuenniKurtithat's probably the childhood lead lol
Going to OU for environmental engineering, learned a lot about the passive restoration efforts to remove the metals in Tar Creek because OU had a large part in it. They started with the goal of just cleaning up the tributaries so the water could be reintroduced to the river, but even wildlife has slowly started to come back, even otters and beavers!
Two headed river otters and beavers with three tails, but they're coming back!
My grandma was born in Treese and raised in Picher. She left in 1950 for nursing school. My great-grandfather worked in the mines in the 1930s and 40s. He died of lung cancer in the early 60's. My grandma always told stories of how she got to go into the mines with her dad once in a while, elevators going hundreds of feet down and whatnot. Told us about playing in the chat piles after school, using pieces of scrap sheet metal to sled down the piles. Which i did once myself as a kid when we went to Picher for my great-grandmas funeral. That was in 94. Even then the town was very much going down hill, but there were still plenty of people there. It's wild how quickly it went over the cliff in the years after.
7:09 "it stops being poison when it becomes road" sounds like a teaser for a Times Beach Missouri video
Turns out that roads can also be poison!
I grew up down the street from one of the STL area dioxin-contaminated Superfund sites. In this case, rather than spraying contaminated oil on the streets a la Times Beach, they sprayed it on the floor of a horse arena in Fenton to keep the dust down. After all the horses died, they dug up the soil and used it for landfill in a nearby residential area. Brilliant!
Austin MConnell shoutout
5:45 It's pronounced Mi-ah-mah!
-Every Oklahoman
No, just those freaks who feel they’re special… As a Tulsan, I’m personally appalled by the presumptive nature in which these people believe they have the right to change the Kings English…
And the Florida one is pronounced Mee-yah-mee.
Not really. Just in that one Will Smith song.
My home town!
More like my-AM-uh
I wanted to scroll through the comments first, just assuming someone else mentioned it first and I was right. 🤣
"I SeNt aMy to ThiS UniNhaBitAble OklAhOma TowN"
I'm just waiting for HAI Mrbeast challenge of live there for a year
6 hours and popular
GOD DAMN
Theres a great metal band called Chat Pile. They're OKC based & of course the name comes from what you've described.
So glad someone mentioned them. Looking forward to their second LP coming this year
Tar Creek is another local okc band and theyre pretty good
We live in an era where HOI vids are 9 minutes long
Don't you mean HAI?
No, I think he meant HOI@@nfcknblvbl
8 minutes without the ad
joe biden’s inflation
Signs of lazy writers.
4:05 It's Cadmium, not Cadium
Ill see you at the end of the year in the "Errors we've made" Video
Cadtium?
I thought I heard it wrong.
Crapium
E
This by-product of mining a toxic metal, you think it's dangerous?
"Nah, let children play with it"
At the time of the moon landings, kids where playing in piles of asbestos,because it was just dumped in loose piles.
That's how pre-millenial children were raised
chat, is this real?
Seems pretty toxic.
Huh?
I've just seen a speech by Moscow Margorie Greene at the Senate hearing where she proposes to disband the EPA. Apparently, all of their work is a hoax.
What do you think, should we vote R this time?
I was looking for this comment 😂
And let me guess, the mining company never set aside any money for this and so now we are paying for it all
Crapitalism
Those would be long gone or would spin off the expenses to someone else like DuPont.
This was supposed to be covered by the EPA's Super Fund, in fact it's why the Super Fund was created. But Oklahoma's corrupt as hell republican legislator blocked the EPA from declaring it a Super Fund site. One Oklahoma Senator in particular, (hopefully I'll remember his name before I get done typing), wiggled his way to the head of the committee that oversees the EPA and stopped them. Reason being the EPA would be required to retroactively hold the surviving mining companies accountable and force them to pay damages. Problem was those mining companies were major supporters of this Senator's campaigns. Plus, the Senator owns the insurance company that covers the mining companies. So his donors would have been held liable and his insurance company would have had to pay the claims.
@@unclerichard6729 it is a Superfund site
not us all, but members of the Quapaw Nation
3:55 "slowly gave them lead poisoning... booooo :( " Sam from Wendover productions definitely wrote this
E
I used to live in Southeast Kansas about 90 miles from Picher. I went through or visited when it was still a lively town, during its decline, and after the end. The Gorilla was the high-school's mascot. The old high school is used by the Quapaw Nation as an emergency center with fire trucks and an ambulance. The football press box was sold to Columbus High School to replace one that burned down and the bleachers of the softball field were moved to Cherokee High School when they wanted to start a softball team (both are in Kansas). One of the last graduates of the high school is the head softball coach at Fort Scott Community Colllege and guided the team to its first juco national tournament appearance. The town is gone but it has a legacy that lives on.
I actually know about the gorilla statue. It's the mascot for the nearby university at Pittsburg in Kansas, Pittsburg State University. The construction department has students create these statues to grade and later donate them to locals.
When you want to go to the University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, PA, but you accidentally end up at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, KS. At least you get a gorilla mascot out of it.
Apparently it was the local school's mascot too
It was the high school's mascot as well, that's why it says "1A Football Champs". 1A refers to the classification for high school football.
1A State Football Champs 1984
Never change small town Oklahoma.
Native Oklahoman here, this town has affected my family in so many ways.... my mothers uncles all died from lung cancers and only one of them was a smoker but they all lived and worked in Picher
I have climbed and played on all those chat piles and have even sled down the really tall one just for fun! (in the 90's) I can't wait to see what happens to me in the coming decade from this stupidity lol
Did you get tested for lead when you lived there? That might be a bellweather for your health.
Sounds like we heard that story for at least 3 times. Its always the same: some big company does business and after a while, no body can live there anymore and hast to either move away or dies because of it. Thats the american dream.
Survival of the fittest working as intended.
We are already in the mid-20s... We might need to specify which 20s now 🙃
As usual, the government and locals pay the price for the recklessness of capital
... with the proviso that the locals were willingly collaborating with capital. That happens.
@@roytee3127 Not willing. Capital always withholds food and shelter from your entire family if you don't comply.
My biggest problem with this episode was the fact that the Jenga-like game people were playing in one of the video segments was clearly NOT Jenga, and it looks so wrong!
Wasn’t expecting an hai video about my favorite 2020s sludge metal band but I’m here for it
WHY. *WHYYY?*
Omg is this where the band Chat Pile got their name? :o 4:08
As someone born and raised in Miami, OK - this rings true!
No way me too
Real Chat Pile fans already know about this town lol
I’m so happy seeing more comments about this band
WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE TO SLEEP OUTSIDE
@@Norman.Metzger LEAVE ME ALONE PURPLE MAN
5:09 I had to stop the video to comment on the absolutely egregious Jenga cheating in this stock footage.
Came here, hoping for someone to point it out.
Another important fact is when they flooded the mines and it started feeding into tar creek this river goes to a really popular lake called grand lake. Really expensive homes all over out there and nobody really knows they are swimming in mostly run off from the mines
That’s life in Oklahoma, you survive all kind of imprudent odds just to be taken out by a tornado.
What a nasty shithole
I live in a town only five miles east of Picher. It's more than just Picher that's contaminated. So is Tar Creek and much of the top soil in areas around Picher. They test kids for lead levels every year for school. People who were born here, and in Picher itself (thank God I moved here and wasn't born here) sometimes have serious health problems. They used to dig up contaminated top soil and replace it when high levels were found, unfortunately wind picks lead dust up off the chat piles and spreads it all over the area. Within a few years, the new clean soil was contaminated as well. In the town of Miami, there's an old Goodrich plant that's half demolished. There's a three block radius around it called " the benzene zone". The soil in these areas has benzene contamination from the Goodrich plant. I live in a deceptively beautiful looking wasteland. 😅
I would try to contain it. Letting it blow away just makes things worse.
As someone who is from NE Oklahoma, I'm so glad you pronounced Miami correctly!
Not sure why this is so important that people would leave comments about it.
i love at 5:48 you talk about people moving out and show stock footage of people moving in, played in reverse 🤣
"How this Oklahoma Town Became Completely Uninhabitable, Aside From Being In Oklahoma"
I fixed it for you.
Oklahoma is already uninhabitable trust me
Definitely a fly over state
Except for the onion burgers, those are great.
At least there is a dispensary on every corner!
As a okie I agree
Been through there. It's a zombie state most of the time
I grew up close to this town in SWMO. Drove through it a few weeks ago! It’s definitely a haunting drive.
Shoutout to Chat Pile the band for teaching me this already
And a lot of people want to disband the EPA? As in "what the fuck?"
Those mining companies hate hearing all the complaints about how their chat is causing disease. Its all a psy op by companies to brainwash people. My parents can't stop railing against trans people. Don't under stand the consequences of chevron being over turned, and think presidential immunity is justified, for trump.
Picher is one of the primary reasons the EPA's "Superfund Site" program exists
Just the Republicans.
If so, then definitely not for reasons like this.
@@Jurgensen1 there could be no good reason for doing such a thing. Not one.
Unhinged conspiracy idiocy spurred out by Republicans going after EPA would end up really hurting thousands of people if no one would stop that craziness.
Omg thank you so much for covering Picher!!!! For anyone interested in reading more, check out "The Town of Silent Poison" by Keep Curious Co. The story is so much more insane and corrupt than can be done justice here.
Chat has entered the Picher
Chat could never.
Guys, listen to the band Chat Pile. Their music is very normal and approachable
GET OUT OF MY ROOM GRIMACE
"Chat"?! Never heard that before. I thought it was called 'tailings'...
So, let me get this straight: is this an highly poisonous area filled with buildings that could crumble at any time which you can easily go to?
How is this not a restricted area?
there's a place in -Colorado- Montana that's an acidic mining waste lake that SELLS TICKETS TO SEE IT and it's pretty popular, though you can't go into the lake
edit
As mentioned in the line about the ATVs, people would likely cut through the fence to get to it even if they fenced it off. So they decided not to bother.
Lazy state government
US 69 cuts through Picher, and about 20 feet off the road on either side is a fence that has "Property of US Government - No Trespassing" signs on it. You can drive through but you can't turn off. It's not a very effective fence though.
Long-term exposure is a greater concern than short-term exposure. Driving through or even stopping for a day probably wouldn't be a big concern, but living there very much is.
I always thought it funny how chat magically became inert once you loaded it up on a truck, and shipped it somewhere else.
And the companies that did all the poisoning? No responsibility huh
Long gone and out of business. There is an entire strip of eastern Kansas/western MO, same for OK and AR where heavy metals (lead, zinc, cadmium, others) were mined extensively until the costs of extraction and declining sales made it unprofitable. The mine owners walked away leaving generations to suffer from poisoning and poverty. Find the docu "Rich Hill", about a town in Missouri and what happened to the people.
@@raygunsforronnie847 and similar events are happening to this day
@@raygunsforronnie847 out of business. That's so convenient for the people who owned the companies, and/or their heirs. Companies are gone but I bet all the money they made isn't.
Hell yea Chat Pile is one of the best bands from Oklahoma
This is now the most interesting way I discovered a band.
@@danebowman6097 they are a delight. Excited for the new album!
Something mad weird happened, I’m on a road trip so I was bored while going through Oklahoma, I saw this town and was really confused with the splotches everywhere, only for this video to pop up in my feed. Neat.
Crazy story. I drove through very near this area for the first time (Route 66) about a week ago. With towns like Galena, KS it was clear that mining was going on but we missed Picher.
i recognize Picher as the other half of Eagle-Picher
I'm 21 and have lived in Oklahoma my entire life. I had never even heard of Picher until earlier this year
lemme guess, a few already rich people got much much richer off this travesty, and all the people working the mines for years and years got starvation wages and lifelong diseases
so THAT'S how the band chat pile got their name!
Actually, Miami, Oklahoma is pronounced "My-am-uh." I don't blame you for not knowing so, as it is very frustrating because it's pronounced Miami everywhere else.
That's how he pronounced it. Did you not catch the fact they joke on its spelling?
@OkieOtaku They joked on the spelling of Picher, not Miami (OK) and he did indeed pronounce Miami, Oklahoma like Miami, Florida
It seems that My-AM-uh is the traditional/old school pronunciation that originated in the north but has fallen out of flavor as Miami (My-AM-ee) Florida became more nationally and internationally known. I’m not 100% for sure but what I’ve always heard is that the pronunciation comes from the pronunciation the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma uses. The Miami were originally from the Great Lakes region before being forced to Indian Territory in the 1840s.
@@OkieOtakuhe said my-am-ee
Like the one in Florida.
The one in Oklahoma is pronounced my-am-uh
there’s a really good band from oklahoma called Chat Pile that i recommend highly
Hell yeah, people used to skii on those chat piles. NE Oklahoma baby
I am a resident in oklahoma and have visited pitcher on several occasions there are around 15 people living there and the abandoned houses can still be explored i have a video on my page where me and my friend look through a house in pitcher but the residences are not fond of people coming in just to look around despite the historical landmark that it is.
I knew it you shouldn’t live in OKlahoma you should live in GOODlahoma
It's a sad yet interesting story I've known about for a while, glad to see more coverage of it!
I drove through this place a couple of years ago and it's eerie to see the empty plots of land and foundations and the giant piles of chat.
A new place to look at with the time-lapse feature of Google Earth.
By the way, as part of my summer vacation, I went to a town called Knurow, which is dotted with coal mines all throughout the town. They are all easily visible, because the tops of the elevators form giant towers which can be seen for kilometers. A part of the town is known as Szczyglowice, and to the east of a city of apartment blocks and one abandoned Stokrotka, there are piles and piles of "chat", but it probably isn't very toxic because this is coal and not lead, and the fact that the older piles are growing trees.
Huh, so this is what the band Chat Pile is about 🤔
just makes me think of the band Chat Pile
Before starting the video, me: "It's gonna be mining!" It was mining. Bonus cameo of the federal government screwing the native americans...again.
E
Reminds me when Tom Scott talked about the City of Asbestos in Canada
I got some pickled eggs from that pharmacy and they were some of the best I've had
Once again the cost is socialized and the profit privatized.
American capitalisim in a nutshell.
The Picher story shows us that nothing is free. There was a price to pay for the wealth generated by the mines.
did u know btw cadium is actually slightly radioactive. so not only were they getting lead poisoning but they were also getting smashed by radiation (and not the good kind)
I drove through Picher once last year. I was completely shocked, never heard of it. Didn’t know its history until I googled it that night.
Chat Pile is also a great band.
4:20 JUDAS PRIEST MENTIONED 🥰
Not to be the “erm actually” guy but I live not far from there and Miami is pronounced like “My-am-uh” not like the famous city. Whenever someone talks about for the first time or are new to the area they ALWAYS make that mistake.
Picher Oklahoma is where my grandma was born. Kinda crazy to hear the name again. Also, Miami Oklahoma is pronounced like my-am-uh.
Wait so you're telling me this is where the term Chat Pile comes from???
Amy didn't visit the uninhabitable city of Picher, Oklahoma so I'm not sure how to full about the legitimacy of this video.. Without Amy covering the news on ground I feel like all this information could be fake...
7:07: "it stops being poison when it starts being road"
Times Beach, Missouri: "Are you sure about that?"
In 2016 I was storm chasing and we had a few days where it was quiet. Naturally we decided to visit Picher and all I can say is wow. What makes it cooler is that in 2004 a lot of buildings were wiped out by a tornado and on the day we were there, there was an active work site by the former high school. It was surreal to be there
Amy is the GOAT.
Press F for Gary
F
F
F
F
Interesting fact, in English mining communities, the waste rock isn’t called chat, it’s called slag. Yup. Slag
I have driven through Picher so many times because I live in SE Kansas, and it is really freaky. I wanted to stop at that gorilla statue (yes, it exists) but then I did some research into how polluted the soil is and thought better of it. While ingestion is the primary lead exposure pathway for kids, inhalation from dust is the primary exposure pathway for adults.
I suggested this idea to HAI like 2 years ago via the submission thing, where's my t-shirt :')
The background music is overpowering Sam’s audio.
Agreed, glad it wasn’t just me.
I went to college at Pittsburg University in Kansas about 45 minutes north east of Picher. Never stopped and walked around but intentionally drove through Picher a few times between 2009 and 2014. The chat piles were massive and everywhere.
There are also hundreds of old open pit and below ground coal mines all over south east Kansas. The below ground ones frequently collapse causing yards, streets, houses, and fields to suddenly subside.
I visited this place twice (abandoned places are cool). It was really spooky how you could tell people just had to gtfo as fast as possible when they would leave their furniture in the road.
In areas where it had slightly flooded, the bottoms of the trees were white and we'd come across random dead animals just laying in the road. I assumed it was too much consumption of the lead filled water.
The town also had more churches than anything I'd seen before. Like every corner was a church.
The high school was the newest looking building but we didn't get to explore it because it was completely fenced in and marshals were stationed right next to the school. Which sucked because I would've explored the shit out of that place.
The thing that has always bothered me was the amount of farm land located at the border of the town. All that lead filled water has to go somewhere when it rains.
A friend of mine went to the collage in Miami oklahoma and said that the parade in Picher was a bigger turnout than the one in the city. He played in the college band so he was apart of the parade.
Your videos are seriously cool, keep 'em coming!
Oh I’ve visited there! We climbed on the chat piles 😅
same!
Lead poisoning lol
It’s important to note that chat is just a local term for mine tailings and isn’t used anywhere else.
While Picher may have it the worst, many towns in that tristate area have problems with lead poisoning. During my University days, I worked at a lab that was working on the problem. We were working on trying to restore vegetation so that roots and plants would prevent the chat and lead dust from spreading or being inhaled.
2nd most toxic kind of chat
It's pronounced miamuh, not miami.
Muh Miami.
The joke writing was extra on point for this one. Great job Amy.
7:05 They must have changed their minds again because I literally hauled almost 15 dump truck loads of sand out of Picher just a couple weeks ago to be mixed into asphalt. He's not exaggerating in the least about how much is there, it's insane how much there is it's literally EVERYWHERE and the piles are massive, like, they make the equipment they load us with look like Tonka toys in a sandbox