(A dog sits in Buffalo Creek hollow in the aftermath of the 1972 coal-slurry dam disaster in this photo by longtime Gazette photographer Lawrence Pierce)
Thirty-eight years ago today, a coal-slurry dam on Buffalo Creek in Logan County, W.Va., broke. A wall of water and coal waste — 30 feet high and 550 feet across — burst from the impoundment, and rushed more than 15 miles down the hollow, toward the confluence of Buffalo Creek and the Guyandotte River at Man.
The disaster killed 125 people, injured 1,000 and left 4,000 homeless.
Here’s part of “Disaster on Buffalo Creek: A Citizens’ Report on the Criminal Negligence in a West Virginia Mining Community,” which we posted online back in 1997 as part of Voices of Buffalo Creek, a series to mark the 25th anniversary of this terrible disaster:
For the Buffalo Creek disaster, like the recent coal-mine fire tragedies at Farmington, West Virginia, and at Hyden, Kentucky, could have been prevented — it need not have happened. Clearly and simply, people living downstream from the Buffalo Mining Company’s coal refuse dam at Saunders were the victims of gross negligence.
In Appalachian — sometimes known as “the last white colony of western civilization” — absentee owners of the region’s vast energy resources and their subservient homebred and imported politicians time and again are to blame for mass death and destruction. Time and again, those most at fault throw up smokescreens to obscure their responsibility .
There is a basic question raised anew by Buffalo Creek, the latest assault by the coal operators in their long slaughterhouse in death, injury and disease: Whether the people of Appalachia and West Virginia can any longer afford this senseless destruction of their lives, their land, and their democratic institutions; or whether the ownership and operation of coal mines should be brought under democratic control to benefit all the people. All to clearly the tragedy of Buffalo Creek has torn away the mask, revealing the ugly truth that powerful coal interests dominate the government, the environment, and the West Virginia way of life to the detriment of all citizens. Discussion and action are needed now to transform King Coal, the tyrant, into Citizen Coal, the servant of all — before and not after another Buffalo Creek disaster.
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They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and this one certainly speaks volumes – a dog curled up where he thinks his home used to be, what is now a barren, level plain of coal ash.
It has been 38 years but we must never, ever, forget Buffalo Creek or the 125 men, women and children who died there. It can happen again in West Virginia because not enough has changed with state and federal regulations and regulators to make sure it doesn’t. And when it does happen again the butcher’s bill is likely to be much, much higher.
Just for the record, there wasn’t any coal ash at Buffalo Creek.
The Buffalo Creek Disaster (9:26 minutes)
The History Channel: Modern Marvels
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMcKyLcQWvQ
Testimonies
1 (1:33 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87xKIIALOII
2 (1:31 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn9Fd3TieCs
3 (1: 43 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgdFcLvQfe4
4 (0:85 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kzWoYJ1PRk
More videos:
http://www.marshall.edu/library/speccoll/virtual_museum/buffalo_creek/html/video-files.asp
http://www.wvculture.org/history/buffcreek/bctitle.html
concerned miner is correct, Monty. I’m not sure where you got the “coal ash” reference.
But I certainly wouldn’t want that error by a Coal Tattoo reader to take away from the incredible photograph that my buddy Larry Pierce got that day. Larry is a legend, having photographed every major event in West Virginia going back more than 40 years.
There’s a great story that Rick Steelhammer did as part of our Voices of Buffalo Creek series that tells the story of one of Larry’s co-workers at the time (and one of my first bosses at the Gazette) Nelson Sorah covering the Buffalo Creek story and working the disaster for the National Guard.
It’s online here:
http://www.wvgazette.com/static/series/buffalocreek/BUFF227.html
Ken.
Thank you Ken, and rest assured I wasn’t taking up for or trying to justify any of the actions at Buffalo Creek. It was a terrible “man made” tragedy.
Excuse me, coal slurry, not ash. But coal all the same.
I remember sitting in a third grade classroom in KC Elementary, watching the helicopters come and go. I couldn’t fully appreciate what was really going on . . . the scale of the devastation and the impact it was having on people . . . but it was one of the first times in my life that I remember knowing it was ‘big’, and very very sad.
I remember driving my white Chevrolet close to Buffalo creek, before being turned around by the State Police, tragedy.