Survivor Tim Hall, a Lundale native who now lives at Mud Fork near Logan, said the flood was worse than any other disaster because of the destruction it caused. Arch Moore agreed to a $1 million settlement before leaving office in . The current members of [the Governors] panel are either oriented to coal or apologists for the tragedy, so we are creating our own commission of 19 residents to take testimony from eyewitnesses, said Pat McClintock at the time. This process was repeated when the third dam (Dam No. To address this problem, two of the main actions taken by the U.S. Bureau of Mines (the federal mine safety agency at that time, now MSHA) were to strengthen the regulations governing the construction of dams by coal mining companies, and to develop in-house technical expertise on impoundment safety. Harry Caudill's "Theirs Be The Power". Ralph Nader letter to Congressional committees raises dangers of coal dams. An official website of the United States government. It was the flood at lick fork. In 1971, Pittston was cited for over 5,000 safety violations at its mines nationally. Three coal waste dams in West Virginia failed, killing 125 people and injuring 1,100 more in communities downstream of the dams. Hearing before the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs United States Senate July 20, 1972. Emery Jeffreys (former reporter for The Logan Banner; account of his early flood-site reporting), Mud, Muck and Misery, LoganWV.us, February 27, 2018. Each of the plaintiffs ended up with about $13,000. I told you this was going to happen, he said, I told you. He had voted for Randolph, but was frustrated with the political process and how the locals were regarded by most politicians. For outsiders, these stereotypes dehumanize the exploited individuals. Set during the Polish-Soviet War of 19191920, Babels novel captured the indiscriminate violence and injustice of warfare. Before that, I was terrified.. Engineers Say Buffalo Dam Doomed at Start, Logan Banner (Logan, WV), May 30, 1972. amzn_assoc_region = "US"; At a protest meeting held in the Buffalo Grade School in Accoville a month after the flood, an older woman stood up and shouted out: Ive lived up at the top of the hollow for a long time. Buffalo Creek Flood released its report.The Commission concluded after eight public Youve still got but it was gone, just like being somewhere and a volcano went off and wiped out your entire village, and even after it was all over with, they went through there and tore out our little road and destroyed all of our little communities, and the people that wanted to couldnt even move back to where they used to live at., It hurts, Hall said. He relied on depositions and additional interviews he conducted to write Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. A Town Stood Here, Life, October 10, 1972. Create a password that only you will remember. Theres also the risk of environmental damage from coal ash, the toxic wastewater left over from burning coal at power plants. 281-298, Appalachian Journal, Vol. A German immigrant from Munich, John Popp (1832-1922) arrived in the U.S. in 1851 and settled in Wheeling. When the water set it down again, it just flattened out on the ground. Jules Lob, Buffalo Creek Now A Valley of Death, Charleston Gazette, March 5, 1972. He argues that stereotypesparticularly the white trash stereotypes depicting Appalachians as lazy, ignorant, and hopelessallow for the continued exploitation of Appalachia by industry. Thanks for visiting and if you like what you find here, please make a donation to help support the research and writing at this website. Associated Press, Pittstons Federal Flood Suit Settled Out of Court, Bluefield Daily Telegraph (Bluefield, WV), July 6, 1974, p. 1. JSTOR is part of ITHAKA, a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways. Since our founding in 1986, we have established ourselves as the premier resource for information about OCD and related disorders, as well as the nexus of a broad international community of. Its not even past.. 1975, which recounted a major court case and liability settlement that emerged from the tragedy on Buffalo Creek. In an out of court settlement, the survivors were awarded $13.5 million, $6 million of which was distributed on the basis of a point system as compensation for the psychological damages. The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man / Buffalo Creek Revisited, BuffaloCreekFlood .org, Website. You have permission to edit this article. One resident had even written to the governor a few years earlier saying if something wasnt done about the dams, were all going to be washed away., We saw the water lift up our house. All we had was the clothes on our backs and I prep, I put back not a lot of food, but as much as Janet (his wife) will let me, and I prepare for nuclear war. 2's slurry pool. Three days later, on February 25, with heavy rain, the water behind dam No. In the year 2000, increased attention was focused on the regulation of coal waste impoundments following a failure near Inez, Kentucky. Not long thereafter, the dam gave way, creating the horror that unfolded for the Buffalo Creek communities downstream. Gertie Moore recalls a personal story about the Buffalo Creekduring a memorial service at the Buffalo Creek Memorial Library on Friday, Feb. 24. Depta recalls the trailers brought in by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to set up temporary living for the newly homeless. Events Leading To The Buffalo Creek Disaster, BuffaloCreekFlood.org. For the flood that followed the collapse of West Virginia's Buffalo Creek Dam in 1972like the one in Idahowas a manmade "natural disaster." It killed 125 people and left hundreds of coal. Winds SW at 5 to 10 mph. I just got done buying a Geiger counter and rebuilding it for someone because everybodys getting afraid of Russia right now.. Governor Arch Moore accepted a $1 million settlement from the Pittston Coal Company related to the 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood. The news of the Buffalo Creek Disaster broke variously across the nation the next few days, in part due to the difficulty of getting to the site. It would just go from one hillside to the other. Still other operations use injection techniques to pump various coal wastes underground. A wave from the waste dam flooded and destroyed the Buffalo Creek community [2]. SOUTH MAN Sunday marked 51 years since the Buffalo Creek Disaster, the worst flood in West Virginias history. its motion to dismiss. A helicopter hovers over one location in the Buffalo Creek valley, surveying the damage in the aftermath of the coal dam failures and devastating flood of February 26, 1972. Buffalo Creek Mine Disaster: Feb. 26, 1972. ", Dealing with Disasters: Some Thoughts on the Adequacy of the Legal System, Coming from West Virginia: An Interview with Songwriter Tom Breiding, The Legendary Language of the Appalachian Holler, Prisoners Like Us: German POW and Black American Solidarity, Hysteria, Indigenous Identities, and Cocaine Bear, Fast and Pluribus: Impacts of a Globalizing McDonalds, How Rap Taught (Some of) the Hip Hop Generation Black History, About the American Prison Newspapers Collection, Submissions: American Prison Newspapers Collection. As the skies cleared on Sunday, February 27, West Virginias Governor, Arch Moore toured the area by helicopter, describing the awesome destruction he viewed from above. U.S. dam will hold. studied the 1972 Buffalo Creek flood in WV. In reaction to the flood, Hechler said: The people are prisoners of the coal industry., Hechlers quote is included in the media theorist Rita Colistras article in the Journal of Appalachian Studies, which also includes a quote from Ralph Nader. One of the country's worst mining-related disasters occurred February 26, 1972, on Buffalo Creek in Logan County. The only warning we had was just a neighbor woman had spotted it and just pulled in front of our house and hollered, Run, the dam has broke! remembered survivor Shirley Marcum. Somewhere along there I lost that boy of mine. The Citizens Commission found Pittston Coal reckless and negligent and the state negligent in ensuring safety compliance. Gertie Moore, a former Logan County Schools bus driver, tearfully recalls two children who perished in the Buffalo Creek Flood during a memorial service at the Buffalo Creek Memorial Library on Friday, Feb. 24. Sorry, there are no recent results for popular commented articles. May 1, 1974Discovery deadline. He didnt make it so all these kids, all of them I knew, I knew their parents.. Coal disaster 50 years later: WVa creek teeming with fish By JOHN RABY The Associated Press, Updated February 26, 2022, 12:47 p.m. Jacob Turkale held a rainbow trout he caught Tuesday along. June 12, 1964Buffalo Mining Company (BMC) incorporated. The three dams also served as something of a crude pollution-prevention system: filtering, settling out, and retaining the dirty prep plant particles and toxins found in the coal wastewater, also enabling some reuse of the water in processing. #3 in his inspection report. Join our new membership program on Patreon today. I was so scared. In just a few brief moments, 125 people were killed, 1,100 were injured, and over 4,000 were left without homes [1] as the result of a collapsed coal waste dam. Arch Moore agreed to a $1,000,000 settlement just days. After then-president of the United Mine Workers Union, Arnold Miller and others were rebuffed by Gov. 51 years later, memories still haunt survivors of Buffalo Creek flood. March 31In anSECfiling, Pittston stated that it believed But West Virginia newspapers in the area were covering the tragedy closely, as the grim business of accounting for the dead, injured, and homeless continued. Logan Flood Toll 66; 400 Missing, Hundreds Search Disaster Area; Cause of Break Gets Attention, Charleston Daily Mail, February 28, 1972. BMCthen builds dam #2. Rescue operations were slowed because roads, bridges and railroad lines were destroyed or blocked. The first is Buffalo Creek Flood: Act of Man. And people die. Creek dams. 20 years prior to the Buffalo Creek flood, a similar incident had occurred. Stephen Young, a Marshall University professor and criminologist, recently wrote an article focused on the 2014 Elk River chemical spill, which left 300,000 West Virginians without clean water. amzn_assoc_marketplace = "amazon"; 2 was built on top of that waste. Work began on drafting a settlement. The wall of water exploded 1945The Lorado Coal Company opened a coal mine at Buffalo Creek and began Beyond coal, and headquartered in New York City, Pittston had other diverse holdings an oil company, a large trucking firm, the Brinks armored car company, and forty percent of the warehouses in New York City. West Virginia has the most with 108. On the morning of February 26, 1972, the failure of three coal slurry dams let loose a tidal wave of destruction upon the Buffalo Creek hollow in Logan county, West Virginia. As of February 1st, 1972, dam No. amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "thpohidill-20"; The lawsuit and the book provide the who live near coal-refuse impoundments.. Buffalo Mining Companys The U.S. Ewen and Lewis highlight dozens of statements from Eriksons book that demonstrate, they believe, his reinforcement of stereotypes and his blaming the victim mentality toward the residents of Buffalo Creek. I found the use of . Published opinion, Am. In the blink of an eye, people's lives completely changed; lives were lost, houses were gone and families were destroyed. The first coal mining in the Buffalo Creek watershed dated to the 1910s when a few coal camps small mining towns sprang up following the first rail lines into the area to exploit the coal there. The Pittston Coal Co., meanwhile, continued extracting coal in the Buffalo Creek area through its subsidiary there. But his youngest son and daughter and his wife were among the missing. Somewhere down in this valley I was born, Breiding sings on the album, adopting the persona of a fourth-generation coal miner who never left home. Pittston Quits the Coal Business, Buffalo CreekFlood.org. Access from your area has been temporarily limited for security reasons. markets. Black water was pumped into pools behind the dams and dams filtered the deposits so that relatively clear water could run out their downstream face. April 16, 1973Plaintiffs moved to amend their complaint to add additional Arnold and Porter noticed Pittstons president and vice-presidents depositions Pittston, meanwhile, would inform its investors that the 1974 settlement that had come with one of the survivors' lawsuits did not impact the company's profit margin. June 26, 1974The plaintiffs and Pittston settle for $13.5 million. 1. The Buffalo Creek Disaster - Los Angeles County Bar Association EN English Deutsch Franais Espaol Portugus Italiano Romn Nederlands Latina Dansk Svenska Norsk Magyar Bahasa Indonesia Trke Suomi Latvian Lithuanian esk Unknown (AP Photo/John Raby). Alvid Davis was working outside his home in the community of Stowe when he looked up and saw the flood waters coming, according to an Associated Press report of February 28, 1972. Barbara Brunty watched from higher ground with her 3-year-old daughter as their home was swept away along with the girls Christmas presents: a toy motorcycle, a kitchen set and a Chatty Cathy doll. The dams themselves were certainly not state-of-the-art construction. Chance of rain 100%. February 28Pittston employee distributes warning memorandum previously Volunteers picked up trash around the creek. The chair of the citizens commission, Norman Williams, then deputy director of West Virginias Department of Natural Resources, called for the outlawing of strip mining throughout the state. Each upstream dam was built several hundred yards upstream of the previous dam. October 6, 1982: Buffalo Creek flood settlement. Chad Motrie's 2003 history of Appalachian strip mining. July 1971Pittstons vice-president of industrial engineering and training a vote of 12 million Associated Press wire story reporting "400 missing" in a front-page story that ran in The Tuscaloosa Times newspaper in Alabama. MSHA said 49 impoundments pose a significant hazard because of the potential damage from a failure. Buffalo Creek Special Series, Charleston Gazette, February 1997. After the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster, Gov. WV. February 1972. But before the acquisition, Pittston engineers had reportedly surveyed the Buffalo Mining property, and according to company officials who later testified: Our reports had no indication that there was any danger, or that anything was wrong with the impoundments . Four years after the disaster, in 1976, about 100 families were still living in the government provided mobile homes. During World War II, almost a half million POWs were interned in the United States, where they forged sympathetic relationships with Black American soldiers. And that same year, 1967, the U.S. Department of the Interior had warned state officials that the Buffalo Creek dams and 29 others throughout West Virginia were unstable and dangerous.[I]f you dont do some-thing, were all going to be washed away. [I]f you dont do something, she wrote, prophetically, were all going to be washed away. Her letter did bring a state inspector to visit the dams. We saw the water lift up our house, said Enda Baisden Short, recalling for. Click for copy. of 38 West Virginia Coal Waste Dams warning about Aberfam. Pittstons amzn_assoc_title = "Additional Reading"; by refuse-pile dams. He is forbidden from distributing the memorandum. 1948US Department of Interior published an information circular, Burning By March 2, Republican Governor Arch Moore announced the formation of an Ad Hoc Commission of Inquiry to investigate the flood. Stern asked Judge Hall to help him get access to the West Virginia Ad Hoc Commission As residents gather this weekend on the 50th anniversary of one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, theyre also able to revel in a comeback. Depta writes: Theyre bringing in trailers so the next time theres a They pointed to a 1966 U.S. Geological Survey report of 1966 that had found 60 such coal mine waste piles in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia, and that little had been done to correct or eliminate those hazards and additional ones since that report was made. The state later had to pay the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers more than $9 million for recovery work along Buffalo Creek. discovery confidential. The. No criminal charges were brought against the mining executives for their negligence in the creation and operation of the illegal and unstable coal waste dams. We have had a couple of conversations since he moved in and that is how I found out he was from Logan, more specifically, Man, West Virginia. 1 (FALL 1999), pp. He said his family washed off and cooked chickens that were killed in the aftermath of the flood. February 1971Dam #3 collapsed. The current rose so high that it covered telephone poles. A temporary morgue was set up at an elementary school in the town of Man. Pittston failed to obtain an independent engineering opinion on the Buffalo In March 1968, DNR notified the Logan County Prosecuting Attorney of Pearl Woodrums letter, but no action was taken at the local level or by the state. Youve still got your church. The dams, built of coal slag wastes, were then owned by the Pittston Coal Company. amzn_assoc_linkid = "97ba3d2dfe21cb80a887e1d63f028ef6"; Associated Press, 37 Killed as Flood Sweeps A Valley in West Virginia, New York Times, Sunday, February 27, 1972, p. 1. Having faced several corruption allegations when serving as governor, Moore left office with this additional blemish on his record. But the company challenged each of the violations and paid only $275 of the $1.3 million in fines originally proposed. He reported there was no danger of a washout of Dam No. The Buffalo Creek Disaster Memorial, located in Kistler, WV, stands as a reminder of one of the darkest hours in West Virginia history. The Buffalo Creek that survives today is calm in places and flows briskly in others, its rapids gurgling. The Buffalo Creek Disaster February 26, 1972, LoganWV.US (website), History and Nostalgia/ Preserving Logan County History. 3/4 (SPRING/SUMMER 2009), pp. Titchener, F.T. Brittany Patterson, The Cautionary Tale of the Largest Coal Ash Waste Site in the U.S., AlleghenyFront.org, June 22, 2018. A U.S. Geological Thank you. Erikson, a Yale professor when he arrived in Buffalo Creek, is one such outsider, having no connection to the region until he was brought in as an expert witness. April 30, 1974Plaintiffs amended their complaint. United States Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Subcommittee on Labor, Buffalo Creek (W. Va.) Disaster 1972, Hearings, May 30 and 31, 1972, 2 vols. Its worth noting that, following Buffalo Creek, two commissions were launched. July 3, 1974Plaintiffs/Pittston $13.5 million settlement agreement filed with Hall agreed and the documents NovemberSpecial grand jury led by two special prosecuting attorneys (includingWVUCollege water. miners. Robert Weedall, West Virginias climatologist, noted in later remarks that yes, Act of God is a legal term, but there were other perhaps more apt legal terms that might apply to what had happened in Buffalo Creek, such as involuntary manslaughter or criminal negligence. The record, however, would prove that acts of man had everything to do with what happened at Buffalo Creek. Stern met with plaintiffs and obtained settlement authority. Pierson said the school he was attending, Lorado Grade School, was destroyed in the flood, and its principal, who he identified as Mr. Ramey, was killed. They also worried about the mining practice of dumping coal mining slag or gob coal mining waste into the dams. Many homes were lost during the Buffalo Creek mining disaster in 1972. As the wave moved down the mountain valley it wiped out much of what stood in its path. Consumer Information .. The state's investigation into the disaster is filled with controversy. 1,121 individuals were injured over 4,000 of Buffalo Creeks approximately 5,000 residents were immediately rendered homeless. I was terrified of water, Pierson said. Nearly 50 years later, there are still hundreds of coal waste dams to worry about, as well as other assorted coal waste dangers throughout the U.S. They flew me out and we landed right here on this road. A coal mine explodes - and a dam fails. George Vecsey, Two Rival Inquiries Are Begun into Flood in West Virginia, New York Times, March 12, 1972, p. 70. Betty Dotson-Lewis / Brian Sewell, The Day Baby Brucie Died: An Oral History of the Buffalo Creek Flood, The Appalachian Voice, February 27, 2012. More than 100 people died in southern West Virginia when a dam failed. Drinking water systems in ten counties had to be shut down, and a 20-mile stretch of river was declared an aquatic dead zone: more than 1,500 fish were killed. Justice v. Pittston class action by now-Judge Phillip Gaujot on behalf of 348 children Privacy Policy Contact Us Sources: The Herald Dispatch, newspaper of Huntington, WV, Thomas Marsh, and the West Virginia Division of Culture and History. Mimi Pickering, my wife, made two documentary films about the disaster. Kapp, Disaster at Buffalo Creek. 1. In fact, there is a very sizeable coal waste legacy that will continue to pose dangers for many rural American communities and the nations rivers and streams for decades to come, even as the coal industry as a whole winds down its role in the U.S. and global economies. Some survivors reported homes exploding or splintering apart with the wave's impact. Like Kalgan mentions these cases sometimes end up "spending more money on litigation costs than on payments that end up in injured plaintiffs pockets" (Kagan, 138). Dam #3 in his inspection report. ITHAKA. However, he did question the ability of the overflow pipes in Dam No. The floods aftermath was widespread property destruction and the deaths of 125 people three of which were babies who were never identified. find dam #3 satisfactory. In the last week of his second term in 1977, Moore accepted a $1 million payment from Pittston Coal Company to settle accounts from the Buffalo Creek Disaster. My daughter said she had heard my wife praying when the waters hit the house, said Davis, later recounting his travail. You can also read the documentation to learn about Wordfence's blocking tools, or visit wordfence.com to learn more about Wordfence. An accounting of the disaster, and multiple investigations, would then proceed to piece together what had happened there, focused on the coal mining and dam building. 2 to handle excessive runoff. Wallace Adkins of Robinette, tried to escape the on-rushing wall of water by loading up his family car. This work revealed the inadequacies that existed at that time in the safety of many of the dams constructed by the coal mining industry. Our lives, our communities the coal company created it, the coal company destroyed it.. For additional stories at this website on the history of coal and coal mining, see for example, the following: Thanks for visiting and if you like what you find here, please. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR. The state sued the company for $100,000,000 dollars but then Gov. The Buffalo Creek disaster is the best example of a tragedy centered on environmental injustice where the minority ethnic groups and low . The Buffalo Creek Disaster, February 26, 1972 One of worst floods in US occurred here 26 February 1972, when Buffalo Mining Co. impoundment dam for mine waste broke, releasing over 130 million gallons of black waste water: killed 125; property losses over $50 million; and thousands left homeless. Mine Safety and Health Administration) to the Buffalo Creek area a few days after the disaster. (AP Photo/John Raby), My dad and brothers all were fishermen and miners, Harvey said. From chaos to responsibility The litigation initiated by the 625 survivors of the Buffalo Creek flood who refused to settle with the coal company claims office was a landmark case. JSTOR, the JSTOR logo, and ITHAKA are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. Table of Contents. The United States declined to sue Pittston for cleanup costs. Debris was everywhere. Arch Moore accepted a settlement offer of $1 million from the Pittston Coal Company. But those improved practices didnt last. The tragedy resulted in a $13.5 million class action settlement, and led to the 1973 Dam . . The problem of coal waste impoundments in Appalachia and all across America has not gone away since the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster. March 2, 1973Judge Hall holds hearing on Pittstons motion to dismiss Mine Safety and Health Administration Gerald M. Stern, The Buffalo Creek Disaster: The Story of the Survivors Unprecedented Lawsuit, New York: Random House, 1976. Senators and experts gather around scale model of Buffalo Creek area in Senate hearing room showing valley below and three coal waste impoundments (#s 8, 5, & 4) that burst causing catastrophic flood on February 26, 1972. the front to drag them to paradise california. document.getElementById( "ak_js_3" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); JSTOR Daily provides context for current events using scholarship found in JSTOR, a digital library of academic journals, books, and other material. The experts concluded that the victims suffered from May 1972, Wash., DC. Choose wisely! Some of the flood damage in the aftermath of the Buffalo Creek disaster in West Virginia, showing "mud line" on damaged home, indicating approximation of flood levels for some structures, while others were carried away in the wave or disintegrated into pieces. The legal teams on both sides also are discussing a settlement. In the end, more than 125 people were killed, at least 1,000 injured, and some 4,000 left homeless. He spoke with residents, including a woman who said she lost eighteen relatives in the flood. LOGAN COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) - It is a day to remember for Logan County. Vintage. It should be widely read, states a 1978 review in the Journal of American Studies: In all its aspectsthe survivors description of the flood and its consequences, the contribution which it makes to an understanding of Appalachian life and to the study of disasters, and its theoretical suggestivenessit is outstanding. 1/2 (Spring/Fall 2010), pp. Arnold and Porter gave Pittston a $32.5 million written settlement proposal. Scholarship on the disaster also helps us get to know the peoplethe victims, the survivorsinvolved. The plaintiffs settled out of court for $13.5 million in 1974, with each individual receiving an average of $13,000 after legal costs. Survivors of 1972 Dam Disaster Accept $13.5-Million Settlement, New York Times, July 6, 1974. You can also read the documentation to learn more about Wordfence 's blocking,! Cited for over 5,000 safety violations at its mines nationally morgue was set up temporary living for the homeless... 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