Another One of Those West Virginia Tragedies

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So many tragedies, and so many of them are related to coal mining. The worst coal mining disaster in American history happened in West Virginia (more on that one later). The worst sports team disaster happened in West Virginia (the Marshall football team plane crash). This one in particular is the worst flood in West Virginia history, and the ninth worst flood in American history (which includes flooding caused by hurricanes). The picture on the upper left is Buffalo Creek. Isn’t it lovely? Yes, absolutely! But there was a time when it turned into a murderous monster…but not totally from a natural cause. The Pittston Coal Company did what a lot of companies did in coal mining: they used natural places like creeks and hollows (or “hollers,” as we call them in Kentucky) to store their coal mining “trash,” the refuse left over after the coal is extracted (like rock and dirt that comes out of the mine with the coal). Over time, the stuff more or less formed a dam in Buffalo Creek. So they started a second pile behind it. When THAT one dammed up the creek again, they put a third pile behind that one. Now, understand, these things weren’t dams the way you think of constructed, engineered devices like Hoover Dam. These weren’t even as cleverly constructed as a beaver’s dam. They were just piles of muck. And, as such, the muck was not solid. Needless to say, it was an accident waiting to happen. And, on February 26, 1972, the accident happened. With rain falling, coupled with snow melt flowing down from the mountains, the water rose at an alarming rate. Shortly after 8 AM, the third and largest dam failed, sending water down toward the towns. With that much water AND slurry falling as fast as gravity takes it, it didn’t take long for the other two slurry dams to collapse. The results were horrific. There were 125 killed out of small mining towns that totaled about 5,000 people. Most of the survivors were left homeless. Additionally, the slurry was toxic, which means it killed the fish in Buffalo Creek. To show you how extensive the environmental damage was: this happened in 1972, and the creek wasn’t clean enough to support fish life again until 2006. Yeowza. Oh, and don’t stop me if you’ve heard this before: before the water had stopped destroying, the president of Prittston announced it was “an act of God,” which is more accurately translated, “We didn’t do anything to cause this.” The resulting lawsuit was one of the first to utilize the idea of mental anguish in a damage suit. Divorce cases usually had a charge of “mental cruelty,” but a case of people injured by a company both physically AND emotionally hadn’t been tried before. Well, lawyers being lawyers and politicians being politicians, the case was dragged out and tied up until West Virginia’s governor Arch A. Moore took the $100 million suit against Prittston filed by the state to recover money for the cleanup efforts and, just before he left office, settled it for a million bucks. If it’s any surprise to you, Moore was later in his life disbarred from legal work and convicted on charges of obstruction of justice, tax evasion, extortion, and mail fraud. None of that brought back the 125 dead, healed the wounds of the physically and emotionally injured, or rebuilt any buildings. The towns along Buffalo Creek are still small places. I couldn’t see any direct physical scars left by the flood, but I know the deepest scars are there…and those are the ones you can’t see. PHOTO COLLAGE: (Upper left) Buffalo Creek (Upper right) Historical marker on the bank of Buffalo Creek in the town of Man (Lower left) Memorial listing the names of the dead and missing from the flood, located in the town of Kistler (Lower right) Sign for the memorial in Kistler