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. 1972About 5,000 people lived in the Buffalo Creek holler including 1,000 You know, its not like your house burned down, Hall said. The Buffalo Creek Flood was a disaster that occurred in 1972 in West Virginia. A few years later, construction began on water and sewage systems, and some permanent housing was built. Youve still got your church. The result of the dam bursting was 132 million gallons of black wastewater being unleashed onto the 16 communities that encompass Buffalo Creek. Somewhere along there I lost that boy of mine. 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. found that the victims didn't experience the enthusiastic feelings because the disaster was so much greater, and . MSHA said 49 impoundments pose a significant hazard because of the potential damage from a failure. And I aint never seen God up there driving no bulldozer dumping slate on that dam. Her remarks won applause from most everyone in the room. The experts concluded that the victims suffered from Support JSTOR Daily! This mining activity, though in the past, had stripped away the water-absorbing forest undergrowth, thus increasing surface run-off during heavy precipitation. Yet, as all who lived in those parts knew well, this was a coal disaster, not an act of God, as the coal company would later claim. No silver spoon, no silver cup., While visiting Buffalo Creek, Breiding stood at the very spot where the dams had once been. Stern describes victims losing family members before their eyes, and the devastation caused by the flood. The failure occurred a minute or so before 8:00 a.m. February 26, 1972, and was solely the cause of the Buffalo Creek flood. flagrant disregard for the safety of residents of Buffalo Creek and other persons 2's slurry pool. More than a dozen homes and hundreds of acres in the down-stream community of Harriman, TN were hit with a gigantic toxic mess. Arlington, VA 22202-5450www.msha.govTTY202-693-9400, Quarterly Training Calls & Stakeholder Meetings, The goal of MSHAs impoundment program continues to help ensure that. By that time he had stopped screaming and drunk so much water and everything I dont what happened to him.. (AP Photo/John Raby), My dad and brothers all were fishermen and miners, Harvey said. Stern and Staker begin discussing settlement. Survey geologist inspects the Buffalo Creek dam and concludes that it was basically 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. An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the e-mail address listed on your account. Roland Staten, a coal miner who had managed to jump off of his house as it was being carried away by the rushing waters, held on to his son as he jumped. Part of that is to tell the survivors' story, to make it impossible . It would just go from one hillside to the other. I'm interested in (please check all that apply). He said his family washed off and cooked chickens that were killed in the aftermath of the flood. ofBMC. The law appears ill-suited to relieve the victims of a disaster, who often have been scarred emotionally not by physical contact but by the destruction of their families, homes, and communities, writes Robert L. Rabin in a 1978 Stanford Law Review article examining the legal ramifications of Buffalo Creek. It took just over 15 minutes. Hope Wanes for 94 Listed Missing in Logan; Known Flood Dead is 88, Charleston Gazette, March 4, 1972. That year, the Buffalo Creek Watershed Association was formed. dumping coal refuse into the mouth of Middle Fork hollow. . Old community ties and neighbor networks could not be reestablished. A German immigrant from Munich, John Popp (1832-1922) arrived in the U.S. in 1851 and settled in Wheeling. The legal teams on both sides also are discussing a settlement. Actual death toll would be 125, nearly twice early reports. Buffalo Mining Companys In 1977, Gov. As of 1987, Pittston was still among the ten largest coal companies in the U.S. 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. 1955(March) Pittston coal refuse dam broke at Lick Fork, Virginia. document.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Mannix Porterfield, a reporter who covered the events of that tragic day, later recalled the destruction left in the floods wake. Get your fix of JSTOR Dailys best stories in your inbox each Thursday. U.S. map showing locations of coal ash waste dams, spills, and contamination compiled by Earth Justice. 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. . No evidence of an act of God was found by the Commission. U.S. U.S. General Accounting Office, Delayed Redevelopment was Reasonable after Flood Disaster in West Virginia, Report of the Comptroller of the United States, Washington, DC: 1976. The floods aftermath was widespread property destruction and the deaths of 125 people three of which were babies who were never identified. Jules Loh, Associated Press, Buffalo Creek Hollow: A Nice Place to Live Then The Flood, March 5, 1972. William Rhee, Associate Professor of Law, West Virginia University, The Buffalo Creek Timeline, WVU.edu, updated on December 30, 2015. a federal safety standard prohibiting refuse piles from impeding drainage or impounding 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. 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. As a result many possible . But the company challenged each of the violations and paid only $275 of the $1.3 million in fines originally proposed. He relied on depositions and additional interviews he conducted to write Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. [I]n true Appalachian fashion, few people are ready to accept the responsibility of leadership is another. Associated Press, Pittstons Federal Flood Suit Settled Out of Court, Bluefield Daily Telegraph (Bluefield, WV), July 6, 1974, p. 1. Out of the total settlement, Arnold and Porter took a legal fee of $3 million. April 1, 1974 Pittston moved to dismiss absent plaintiffs, plaintiffs claiming psychic injury while they were physically away from Buffalo Creek during the flood. He didnt make it so all these kids, all of them I knew, I knew their parents.. 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. Each failure added millions of gallons to the monstrous wave of water bearing down on the residents of the countryside and towns below. The state sued the company for $100,000,000 dollars but then Gov. Davitt McAteer's book on the 1907 Monongah mine disaster. - $13 million - Initially asked for $32 million - 2016: would be $65,208,559 (without legal and contingency fees) The outcome for Arnold & Porter - $3 million in legal fees (1974) - 43,000 man-hours . Press Release, New Federal Standards Needed for Storing Coal Waste, National Research Council (Washington, DC), October 21, 2001. The Pittston Coal Co., meanwhile, continued extracting coal in the Buffalo Creek area through its subsidiary there. Click the card to flip Definition 1 / 149 * the author, former civil rights attorney employed at Arnold and Porter (large DC firm) * lead attorney in Buffalo Creek case Click the card to flip Flashcards Learn Test Match Created by Mariam_Salman27 Terms in this set (149) Pittston objected to Arnold & Porters more definite statement, asking the Headlines from an Associated Press story reporting that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers -- also testifying at U.S. Senate hearings -- found the the Pittston Coal Co. dam above Buffalo Creek was "doomed from the start.". This process was repeated when the third dam (Dam No. Mine Safety and Health Administration) to the Buffalo Creek area a few days after the disaster. The Charleston Gazette reporting on the rising death toll of the Buffalo Creek Disaster and Pittstons PR office calling the disaster an act of God. Approximately 550 homes were destroyed, and another 900-plus were damaged. Tom Breiding, a Pittsburgh singer-songwriter with West Virginia roots, saw this firsthand when he traveled to Buffalo Creek for research while composing his 2008 album The Unbroken Circle: Songs of the West Virginia Coalfields. The survivors of the Buffalo Creek disaster suffered both individual and collective trauma, the latter being reflected in their loss of communality. The second commission, the Citizens Commission, was established to counter this bias. April 16, 1973Plaintiffs moved to amend their complaint to add additional [W]e decided we would band together and hope it would relieve our tensions and fears, stated one member of the group. One resident at the scene, later quoted in in Kai T. Eriksons book. Stern met with plaintiffs and obtained settlement authority. By June 1970, Pittston had acquired the Buffalo Mining Company. Is the unique Appalachian dialect the preserved language of Elizabethan England? June 2, 1971BMCs vice president asked Pittstons legal counsel about Gerald M. Stern, The Buffalo Creek Disaster: The Story of the Survivors Unprecedented Lawsuit, New York: Random House, 1976. Moore would prevail in the election, campaigning heavily in West Virginias coal mining regions, impugning Rockefellers position on strip mining. Governor Arch Moore accepted a $1 million settlement from the Pittston Coal Company related to the 1972 Buffalo Creek Flood. Submitting this form below will send a message to your email with a link to change your password. Young draws parallels between Appalachia and the colonialist exploitation of Third World countries, as well as the exploitation of communities of color, such as Flint, Michigan. A number of leaks and smaller spills have also occurred. The outcome of the lawsuits surrounding Buffalo Creek go far in demonstrating the power divide between the haves and the have-nots in Appalachia. It was the flood at lick fork. Some residents in higher hilltop homes overlooking Buffalo Creek, watched as entire houses floated down the hollow, some later crashing into a small bridge downstream. Emery Jeffreys (former reporter for The Logan Banner; account of his early flood-site reporting), Mud, Muck and Misery, LoganWV.us, February 27, 2018. water. One lawsuit was filed by the state of West Virginia, while another class action lawsuit was filed by survivors of the flood. amzn_assoc_tracking_id = "thpohidill-20"; "Coal: A Human History", 2016 edition. Craig Ammerman, Eight More Bodies Found; Logan Flood Toll Climbs to 84, Charleston Gazette, March 3, 1972. 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. In March 1967, a partial collapse at one of the dams caused some flooding in the hollow, alarming residents already concerned about the structures. 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. February 1972. UPI photographer Leo Gardner, one of the first outsiders to reach the area reported, Lorado was wiped out. Another early report from the devastation noted: 52 bodies lying on both sides of the road running alongside Buffalo Creek. Some drowned in the floodwaters, while others were buried by landslides, as a thick muck had moved along with the coal water. The cause of the Buffalo Creek failure was analyzed, an inventory of coal waste impoundments was compiled, and emergency inspections were conducted to identify other potentially hazardous sites. The tragedy resulted in a $13.5 million class action settlement, and led to the 1973 Dam Control Act. 3 was being filled at a rate of about 1,000 tons of refuse a day, carried from the coal preparation plant to the dam in 30-ton trucks. When the water set it down again, it just flattened out on the ground. As of December 2014, some 331 of these facilities were rated as either holding a high or significant safety hazard meaning likely loss of life in the former case, and significant economic/environmental damage in the latter case. 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. An airplane crashes. 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. The state filed a $100 million lawsuit against mine owner Pittston Coal; then-Gov. Click for copy. After the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster, Gov. The Buffalo Creek Disaster: How the Survivors of One of the Worst Disasters in Coal-Mining History Brought Suit Against the Coal Company- And Won. There had been emergency relief, but little community redevelopment. The Earth Justice organization, one of the environmental groups following this issue, has complied a U.S. map of these sites as shown above. Kai Eriksons book, Everything In Its Path: Destruc-tion of Community in The Buffalo Creek Flood. Depta recalls the trailers brought in by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to set up temporary living for the newly homeless. Titchener, F.T. Eventually, she and her husband, Arthur, rebuilt on the same spot as the old house. unstable and that the bank [was] subject to large wash-out on [the] north side 3 failed at 8 a.m., releasing millions of gallons of water into Dam No. 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. Chad Motrie's 2003 history of Appalachian strip mining. amzn_assoc_ad_mode = "manual"; In 1977, Governor Moore, with three days left in office, accepted a settlement offer of $1 million for a suit in which the state sought $100 million from the coal company. by refuse-pile dams. He is forbidden from distributing the memorandum. 302-305. WV. Arch Moore's emergency director asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to perform recovery work at state expense. Nothing is the same around this place. The Buffalo Creek Flood and Disaster: Official Report from the Governors Ad Hoc Commission of Inquiry, 1973 (PDF of actual report at Marshall University). I just got done buying a Geiger counter and rebuilding it for someone because everybodys getting afraid of Russia right now.. Click for copy. Ben A. Franklin, Flood Survivors Sue Mine Concern; Plaintiffs Ask $64-Million Seek Damages Over Survivor Syndrome; 800 Pages of Testimony; A Sound Like Thunder, New York Times, April 18, 1973. The first was an ad hoc commission established by West Virginia Governor Arch Moore. The Pittston Company: Company Profile & History, ReferenceForBusiness.com. Left over from Scots-Irish immigrants? In fact, the company was cited for over 5,000 safety violations at its mines nationally in 1971. November 1968Consolidation Coal Company mine explosion at Farmington, April 16, 1971WVDNR Inspector recommended an emergency spillway on Dam 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. Penny Loeb's 2007 book, "Moving Mountains". ITHAKA. In the early morning hours of Saturday, February 26th, 1972, after three days of rain, a series of coal slurry impoundments in the upper reaches of the Buffalo Creek watershed in Logan County, West Virginia, were beginning to weaken. July 3, 1974Plaintiffs/Pittston $13.5 million settlement agreement filed with (Rockefeller would later be elected governor and U.S. amzn_assoc_search_bar = "true"; No dollar amount could ever erase for the survivors what happened at Buffalo Creek. (1976). Share Buffalo Creek Flood. Buffalo Creek Disaster 1. Arnold & Porters medical and psychological experts started interviewing and Pittston had made only one payment for $4,000. With little warning to residents, more than 130 million gallons of dark floodwaters tore through more than a dozen communities in the hollow. Pittston Quits the Coal Business, Buffalo CreekFlood.org. The flood wave destroyed houses and mobile homes, uprooted trees, and swept topsoil, huge rocks, trucks and cars downstream. The current rose so high that it covered telephone poles. Pittstons Oil Division applied to Maines Department of Environmental Protection Click for copy. Because of the downpour, nearly 50 acre-feet of fresh water filled the pool of Dam No. (1972). The other, David Adkins Jr., he was the same age five he hadnt started school either, but every evening, he was out and back then, they put braces in a fence and hed sit right in that brace and hed watch that bus every evening like he was saying, Next year, Im going to ride that bus. He didnt make it. Those parts of the book are the choices regarding: who to name as defendant; what court to file in; and what type of suit to file. Approximately $5.5 million was provided for property and wrongful-death damages, with approximately $8 million for the psychic impairment claims. On Feb. 26, 1972, at approximately 8 a.m., a coal slurry impoundment dam owned by Pittston Coal Company burst . I seen trees, logs, cars, slate, slush, you name it and it was in that.. Many lived in temporary trailer-park style homes following the disaster some for years. After last year, Pierson, who now lives in Scott Depot, made the drive home to Logan County once again to reminisce with other survivors. The Buffalo Creek Disaster: The Story of the Survivors . Among officials and Senators shown are, from left: Dennis Gibson, Buffalo Mining Co.(22) Garth Fuguay (21, with pointer), Army Corps of Engineers; Sen. Harold Hughes (18); Sen. Jennings Randolph (17); Sen. Jacob Javits (16); Sen. Harrison Williams (15); Sen. Richard Scheiker (19), and Sen. Robert Stafford (20). Fuquay would also conduct an early field analysis of what happened there. I love it, said Jacob Turkale, 25, who caught a rainbow trout Tuesday. United States Army Corps of Engineers. ", 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. 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. By September 1972, the two competing West Virginia commissions one from the Governor, and the other a Citizens Commission issued their reports. bringing the total to 625, and $64 million in damages. million deductible in response to the Dola, W. Va., dam failure. 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. Buffalo Creek Special Series, Charleston Gazette, February 1997. August 8, 1972Congress passed the National Dam Inspection Act. Logan Flood Toll 66; 400 Missing, Hundreds Search Disaster Area; Cause of Break Gets Attention, Charleston Daily Mail, February 28, 1972. Recent history suggests that a number of these facilities and practices hold public safety risks and/or environmental threats. State regulators sued the mines owner. Headlines from 'The Springfield Republican' of Massachusetts, report on the 'W.Va. 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. Mine Safety and Health Administration Feb 28, 1972, The Logan Banner of Logan, WV reports on the search for victims, relief effort, and first-hand accounts. During the flood, 125 people lost their lives, 1,100 were injured and 4,000 were left homeless. alternative for a more definite statement as to plaintiffs states of citizenship Pierson said he traumatized at age seven by the power going off during a rain storm and his grandfather knocking on the door. It wasnt if Buffalo Creek would ever happen again, but when. K.T. Last Update:31 January2019 July 1971Pittstons vice-president of industrial engineering and training Still highly regarded today, a 2011 paper in the Asian Journal of Social Science refers to Eriksons book as a classic piece on the sociological study of post-disaster societies., Some, however, have taken issue with Eriksons work and, on a larger scale, with outsiders views of Appalachia. (HTTP response code 503). Hall also asked Pittston Judge Christie, the federal district judge originally assigned to the case, removes March 2, 1973Judge Hall holds hearing on Pittstons motion to dismiss In 2005, the ecosystem took another hit when water blew out of an abandoned coal mine, turning the creek green. 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