MayA group of Buffalo Creek disaster survivors traveled to Pittstons Citing coal industry dereliction throughout central Appalachia, they said it was imperative for Congress to investigate the industrys practice of erecting crudely-made coal refuse dams and propose legislation to prevent future disasters. Stern met with plaintiffs and obtained settlement authority. An official website of the United States government. The Pittston Company: Company Profile & History, ReferenceForBusiness.com. of Law Dean Willard Lorensen) brings no criminal indictments against Pittston. 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 . Arnold and Porter noticed Pittstons president and vice-presidents depositions It just doesnt seem that long ago that it happened, Harvey said. Richard Martin's 2015 book, "Coal Wars". Engineers Say Buffalo Dam Doomed at Start, Logan Banner (Logan, WV), May 30, 1972. Ive been fishing here for almost 17 years. Children walk along the tracks in what remains of their community along Buffalo Creek, in West Virginia, on Feb. 27, 1972. Jack Doyle, "Buffalo Creek Disaster: 1972,"PopHistoryDig, January 31, 2019. wvculture/history/buffcreek . M. S. TERN, T . The headlines the next day played the catastrophe as a flood disaster, as there had been heavy rain. Teaching with Reveal Digitals American Prison Newspapers Collection, a finalist for the National Book Award the year of its release, Buffalo Creek Revisited: Deconstructing Kai Eriksons Stereotypes,, The Rumble and the Dark: Regional Newspaper Framing of the Buffalo Creek Mine Disaster of 1972, Resilience in Post Disaster Societies: From Crisis to Development, Buffalo Creek Revisited: Deconstructing Kai Erikson's Stereotypes, "Do We Really Want to Go Down That Path? And people die. Hearing before the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs United States Senate July 20, 1972. Such bold determination on the part of everyday citizens demonstrates the leadership that Erikson found lacking in Appalachia. Still, the worries for citizens living near either kind of impoundment are equally valid, whether of the mine-site or powerplant variety. The Springfield Republican newspaper of of Springfield, Massachusetts ran a wire story from United Press International (UPI) on the front page with the headline: 80 to 90 Feared Dead in W. Va. Dam Break; Mining Town Wiped Out. That story shared the front page with other national and regional news that day, picturing U.S. The socio-psychology of all this was probed and covered in an award-winning 1976 book by Kai T. Erikson. As of 1987, Pittston was still among the ten largest coal companies in the U.S. Recent history suggests that a number of these facilities and practices hold public safety risks and/or environmental threats. It would go this way on this side of the hill and take a house out; take one house out of all the rows, and then go back the other way. By the days end, hundreds of homes and vehicles were destroyed, thousands were left homeless, and 125 men, women, and children were dead. "one acre of area covered by water to a depth of 300 feet", OR . February 26, 2022, was the 50th anniversary of the Buffalo Creek Flood in West Virginia that killed 125 people and left 4,000 homeless. and damage claims. 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. Pierson said he was flown out by helicopter. Property damage is estimated to be upward of $50 million or more. You know, its not like your house burned down, Hall said. (AP Photo/John Raby). The association bought habitat structures to further help form the pools that trout prefer. When the water set it down again, it just flattened out on the ground. 2's slurry pool. Uploaded by api-369440949. BMCfilled the hole with more coal refuse. (2) Stern, G.M. dams. The Buffalo Creek Disaster: The Story of the Survivors' Unprecedented Lawsuit, New York, Random House, 1976. Map of Buffalo Creek communities in 1972 shown with disaster summary inset. In a court statement later, Mr. Staten recounted his travail and losing his wife: When I looked back and saw her she said, Take care of my baby.Thats the last time I saw her., Mr. Staten and his son, meanwhile, swept along in the water, were struggling to save themselves. This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. . Robert C. Withers, The Disaster of Buffalo Creek, Report of the West Virginia Adjutant General, Charleston, WV, 1972. amzn_assoc_placement = "adunit0"; psychic injury while they were physically away from Buffalo Creek during the flood. a federal safety standard prohibiting refuse piles from impeding drainage or impounding They are used to hard times. The association will hold its annual kids fishing event in April, giving away 125 rods and reels and other fishing gear. . 1912The C&O Railroad build the first spur line by Buffalo Creek. Judge Christie, the federal district judge originally assigned to the case, removes They lost loved ones, their homes, their neighbors, their community. July 1971Pittstons vice-president of industrial engineering and training The number stern settled on was 32.5 million dollars. The flood caused many tears, pain and death. December 2008. 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. Headlines from 'The Springfield Republican' of Massachusetts, report on the 'W.Va. (plus appendices, vol. Published: Feb. 27, 2022 at 12:17 PM PST. 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. April 16, 1971WVDNR Inspector recommended an emergency spillway on Dam All Rights Reserved. K.T. Pittston by then had developed a reputation for poor safety practices, and was ranked second nationally in the number of fatal and non-fatal mine accidents. 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. not in the Prince lawsuit filed in federal district court. I didnt have no fear for water, Id just jump right in any lake or river and swim. This resolution was passed in spirit only. JSTOR, the JSTOR logo, and ITHAKA are registered trademarks of ITHAKA. For outsiders, these stereotypes dehumanize the exploited individuals. find dam #3 satisfactory. Buffalo Creek Disaster Term 1 / 149 Who is Gerald Stern? 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. Mine Safety and Health Administration) to the Buffalo Creek area a few days after the disaster. Davitt McAteer's book on the 1907 Monongah mine disaster. The report also noted the possibility that water and coal wastes in abandoned underground mines could break through auger holes and flow into the impoundment behind dam #3, as the practice of disposing coal sludges in abandoned underground mines had occurred in other areas of the state, with sludges breaking through to the surface in some cases. about future Aberfan disasters. How the 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood Disaster Forever Changed Appalachia A Book Proposal by Tom Nugent. That year, the Buffalo Creek Watershed Association was formed. We saw the water lift up our house, said Enda Baisden Short, recalling for The Herald Dispatch of Huntington, West Virginia that she and her husband had run from their home early that Saturday morning just prior to coal waste flood. Tempers flared there as one local man tore into Randolph. to let the plaintiffs see Pittstons insurance documents and refused to keep The floods aftermath was widespread property destruction and the deaths of 125 people three of which were babies who were never identified. We do not see this as a disaster in a vacuum, he said, but a series of events of coal dominating the lives of West Virginians.. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely. flood the people will already have their coffins It was the flood at lick fork. amzn_assoc_search_bar = "true"; One retired coal miner who survived the flood, but who lost his wife, daughter and granddaughter in the disaster, explained what he experienced in one. The black wall of water was later estimated to have moved at a rate of seven feet per second. 27, No. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. February 22A federal mine inspector andBMCsafety engineer Pittston settled all property damage claims. The couple had nine children. March 5, 1972. I found the use of . injury claims of 33 plaintiffs, published 63 F.R.D. A Buffalo Creek native, Victor M. Depta, gets at this idea of recurring tragedy in a 1973 poem, written not long after the 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 was a recipe for disaster as the trio of dams was inadequate to handle runoff from large rainstorms, like the one that dumped several inches of rain on Logan County by early Saturday morning, Feb. 26. gave way, killing eight people. The state of West Virginia also sued Pittston for $100 million for disaster and relief damages, but Governor Arch A. Moore settled that case for just $1 million three days before leaving office in 1977. The tragedy being spoken of is the Buffalo . April 16, 1973Plaintiffs moved to amend their complaint to add additional Hall agreed and the documents In March 1967, a partial collapse at one of the dams caused some flooding in the hollow, alarming residents already concerned about the structures. 2 held and halted the water. And by 1968, the company was dumping more gob at a third location, another 600 feet upstream. 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. Ken Ward, Jr., Agencies Failed to Protect People, Inspector Recalls, Charleston Gazette, Tuesday, February 25, 1997. February 26, 2022, marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most devastating mine disasters in U.S. history. amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "thpohidill-20"; Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password. Human relationships in this community had been derived from traditional bonds of kinship and neighborliness. Miles away, a coal companys hillside impoundment dams collapsed, sending slurry thundering downhill and into the hollow, inundating small communities and killing 125 people. July 5, 1973Judge Hall granted plaintiffs motion to amend their complaint. is not a proper party, to strike certain allegations in the complaint, and in the amzn_assoc_region = "US"; The association used settlement money to start fixing the creek. You talk about another terror, a man goes from high water and being scared to being up in the sky, so I went through that, Pierson said. November 14, 1970: Marshall University football team killed in plane crash. Ewen and Lewis also include the story of another survivor who spent five months rebuilding his damaged home rather than letting authorities tear it down (it had been deemed to be damaged beyond repair). It goes between the hospital and the high school and I remember when we got off, these people run up to us and they was writing down our names to get a recovery list for people that made it, and needless to say, there was groups of people that were sent there.. Old community ties and neighbor networks could not be reestablished. WVPB News. More than a dozen homes and hundreds of acres in the down-stream community of Harriman, TN were hit with a gigantic toxic mess. 300 acre-feet of water would be: Children of Disaster: Clinical Observations at Buffalo Creek, American Journal of Psychiatry, March 1976, pp.306-12. To view our latest e-Edition click the image at left. According to one assessment at the time: These impromptu structures were hardly dams in any technical sense They were simply piles of coal waste, clay, shale, red dog, and other by-products of the coal preparation process, dumped off the back of trucks and bulldozed to an even height. This subcommittee would hear from dozens of witnesses, and was briefed at one point by experts from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who provided a scale model of the site with details of what happened (see photo below). The "suspenseful and completely absorbing story" (San Francisco Chronicle) of how survivors of the worst coal-mining disaster in history triumphed over corporate irresponsibilitywritten by the young lawyer who took on their case and won.One Saturday morning in February 1972, an impoundment dam owned by the Pittston Coal Company burst, sending a 130 million gallon, 25 foot tidal wave of . Plaintiffs filed their more definite statement of their damage claims. Aerial photograph used during investigation of Buffalo Creek Disaster, showing the approximate locations of the three coal waste gop dams, and the path taken by coal slurry flood wave on its destructive run downstream. Nader was also quoted saying: The Buffalo Creek massacre is only one more in the long series of tragedies which coal corporations have perpetrated upon the people of Appalachia, especially of West Virginia.. Your purchase was successful, and you are now logged in. Pittstons Buffalo Mining Companys They also worried about the mining practice of dumping coal mining slag or gob coal mining waste into the dams. . Civ Pro: Buffalo Creek Disaster notes Questions o Who are the Parties Plaintiff: Workers Defendant: Coal company: Buffalo Mining Company (and Pittston Company, based in NYC = sole stockholder) o One of the largest employers in the West Virginia county Attorneys Author Mr. Staker (Famous lawyer) Judges Judge Christie (left b/c of his old friend) Kentucky has 102. With little warning to residents, more than 130 million gallons of dark floodwaters tore through more than a dozen communities in the hollow. The. Roads werent where they used to be, nor were houses. 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