Imagine, if you will, a birds eye view of the state of West Virginia, Logan County, February 26,1972. A majestic view of the magnificent Appalachian Mountain range that make up a vast majority of the state. Mountain after mountain. Ridge tops running for miles, tapering off in many directions and often dropping down into small hollows where the people have made their homes.
February doesnt offer much in the way of color. The leaves have all died and fallen off the trees and all that have remained are assorted colors of brown. Maybe the occasional fluff of white where snow has fallen and stuck to the ground.
On this particular day, the ground appears to be vastly dark because of recent rain. Mountaintop after mountaintop, valley after valley, the area looks almost the same no matter where you look. Brown and shades of gray make up the landscape, color exits where one may see a home or vehicle parked in a driveway or along a roadside.
Patches of fog rise up gracefully from the ground, hopes of spring possibly coming to the mountain state early, saying goodbye to the harsh cold winter. Trees thickly cover the ground, every where you can see. Mountain after mountain, ridge top to ridge top, grayish brown. Until we come across one particular range of mountains into the valley called Buffalo Creek. We see something has made a most drastic change in the color of the landscape. Instead of brown and gray, we see nothing but black and tangled masses of assorted colors heaped in certain spots along what could possibly be a stream.
We come down closer for a look and are totally awestruck at what we see. We find that this valley was once heavily populated and dotted with numerous communities all up and down the stream. Mountainsides covered in the brown and gray colors of a rain soaked late winter, normal by all standards, but the area between the mountains concern us the most. The valley floor itself is tar black, covered in an oily black substance which is blacker than the very coal that is mined from the mountains themselves.

The masses of jumbled colors which lay heaped in piles all along the valley floor look to have once been pieces of homes, cars, trailers, coal cars and even possibly, human remains.For over sixteen miles up through the valley, the scene hasnt changed. An oily black film from mountain to mountain, some places nearly 300 feet wide if not more. Spotted areas along the way still show signs of homes and vehicles, perhaps even a string of Chesapeake and Ohio Railway cars, which at some places look to have been crammed together by some force we still havent figured out.
Onward to the head of the valley, at a junction where two small hollows join, a place that was named Middle Fork Hollow only God knows when, lies an area where the local coal company dumped coal mine refuse into sediment ponds built high up into the hollow. But on this particular day, there is no water in those ponds which were built back in the late 1940s. There isnt even much sediment where they once were seated. The contents of the sediment ponds were spread out for sixteen miles down through the valley floor. It had happened. The residents of Buffalo Creek experienced their worst fears and nightmares. The sediment ponds, all three of them, built between the mountains of Middle Fork Hollow had burst.
Traveling back down through the valley, foundations of block and stone are all that remain, in some cases, of where homes once stood. The mountainsides are dotted with confused and dazed residents trying to make sense of what had just happened. People walking through the woods, some clothed, half-clothed and in some instances, mostly naked. Covered in thick, black oily mud, expressions of fear, concern and confusion dominate their facial features.Amidst the roar of hostile water, voices are heard screaming for loved ones who, a few moments ago, were either in bed sleeping or maybe cooking some breakfast. Cries of anguish fill the empty valley of Buffalo Creek. Names are called out, over and over, but no reply is heard. Someone screams a most horrid scream as the body of their child has been found, washed completely out of his pajamas by the rapid tidal wave.Areas of the valley are completely blocked by the remains of homes and cars. Heaped up on top of one another in a jangled mass, washed there with-in mere seconds. Homes left barely standing, miles away from where they were once built.

Again, voices are heard calling out names that will never again answer the call of a mom or dad. Screams, crying out in anguish. Asking the question of why? What happened? How? People trying so desperately to make it back up or down the valley after a shifts work in the coal mines that were owned by Pittston Coal Company. Asking everyone they meet along the way, if they knew of this family or that family. How are my wife and kids? Or did it hit mom and dads place?
Littered through the valley were homes, cars buildings, stores and supplies. Peoples livestock washed into the mass of debris that seamed to be at every turn along the stream.
And the most horrible shock of all, the remains of people scattered along with all that remained of a once thriving valley of communities. People who for every intent and purpose should still be at home in bed or watching Saturday morning cartoons on television with their children. Their lives and dreams swept away in the torrential wave of mine refuse waste, which had been stored for almost fifteen years.Could it even be possible for someone to describe in detail the aftermath of such a catastrophe? Photos taken of the wreckage show as many as seventeen wooden frame homes in a heap as they were washed together. Tales from the survivors depict neighbors homes being swiftly washed afloat off of their foundations and as they would collide with other homes or perhaps a metal girded bridge, explode into splintered fragments. Washed away were the homes, dreams and loved ones.Massive piles of wood, mostly 2 X 4s and other building material, jumbled together and out of the midst of those piles one would see the familiarity of a car grill and headlights. Inside those automobiles would be the owners, still clinging to the steering wheel, as their last hope in this life was to try to out run the wave of mud and debris.Bridges that did remain were now covered in the same debris that the rest of the valley was covered in. Still, the cries of the survivors echo through the mountains and empty valley floor.

Steel girded bridges washed completely off their concrete beds, not only were they dislodged but moved hundreds of feet from where they were built. Even the railroad wasnt saved from the disaster. Rails were up rooted and twisted around trees and power poles, those that remained. 165 pound steel rails, twisted like licorice twist.
Victims bodies were found as far as 40 miles away, as they were carried by the Guyandotte River.All totaled, 125 men, women and children perished. Seven bodies have not been recovered to this day and the remains of three small children, that had been found, were never identified. In personal property, 4,000 people were left homeless. $50 million in property damage was done including 546 homes completely destroyed and over 538 homes damaged. Insult to injury occurred after the flood. What few homes could be salvaged and repaired, the government came in and condemned them, causing more heartache and grief. Imagine how the survivors felt after they had almost been washed away. Uncovered from the black residue, the remains of their family members, buried them, returned to what was left of their homes, only to be ordered out by those who did not care.
My desire to write about Buffalo Creek, 36 years after the disaster, is only because of information obtained about the cause and history of the area. Information and eyewitness accounts that are as muddled and confusing as the Buffalo Creek valley was on that day in February. Having talked to many of the survivors. Heard the tales. And still see the memory fresh on their faces, even to this day. Many who survived, will turn you away when asked about that day. They dont want to remember. They dont want to recall. They dont want to relive the horror of that day so long ago.

Was this an accident? Was it a disaster that could have been prevented? Was it necessary for all this destruction to have had to taken place on this weekend morning? Today, some 36 years after the disaster, the very same questions that were asked then, are still being asked today. And today, as it was back on that day in February 1972, no one still has any answers.The state and federal government have forgotten Buffalo Creek and its victims and survivors. But those who remain, rebuilt their lives back where it was almost taken away, that morning is as fresh a memory as it was then, scared permanently in their minds and souls. No chance ever of it being removed.

Promises were made by the coal company and the government. But as politics would have it, once the flood of demands and questions had subsided as the water itself, no one really cared anymore about those left. Whew!!! We almost had to pay people money for something WE could have prevented! One could almost hear them say. Before the last piece of debris had settled into the Guyandotte River in Man, a little town located at the mouth of the Buffalo Creek valley, the blame game began. But they never saw what their neglect had done to the people who lived in that valley. Never had to relive watching wives, husbands and children be swept away. Instances where small children were torn from their parents arms by the torrent of water. They never saw the looks in the faces of helpless people, people who were staring into the confusion of what now had become their life. Based on interviews done through the years, and of course right after the flood, it would surprise you exactly how many of Buffalo Creeks citizens actually knew that the coal company had refuse dams in Middle Fork.

Did the people have any type of warning that this could happen? Yes, many times in the 15 year history of those dams people were warned and scarred into evacuating their homes. But nothing happened, the dams remained and eventually it became like the story of the boy who cried wolf, no one gave heed anymore, except, maybe, the residents of Saunders, who were the closest coal camp to the dams. Was the state and federal governments aware of the scope of such a disaster? Was anyone in any type of government agency aware? The answer is simply, yes, they were!

On October 21, 1966, a sediment pile almost like the one in Buffalo Creek, gave way due to heavy rains, the coal and slate refuse cannot hold water because it is too lightweight and porous. At 9:15 am the village of Aberfan, South Wales, was blasted by a thunderous roar from the slate piles on the mountain above the sleepy village. The village lay in a valley, at the base of a mountain. On that mountain were slag heaps of huge amounts of coal waste, like the ones in Buffalo Creek. 600 feet below the top of the mountain lay Pantglas Junior School. The children had just returned to class after singing All Things Bright and Beautiful in their morning assembly. Workers at the tipple above the village saw the slag pile giving way, but because of their telephone cables being stolen, could not have called to warn anyone in the valley below. It was later reported that a phone call would not have helped anyway.
The primary cause of the disaster was an underground spring beneath the waste piles. The spring was well known by locals but the National Coal Board, Britains equivalent to Americas Mine Safety and Health Administration, denied all knowledge of it. Two days of heavy rainfall had loosened the slag from the Merthr Vale Colliery and half a million tons of coal waste descended in the direction of the school. The black, billowing mass, 40 feet high, demolished a terraced row of houses, a farm and engulfed the school. Parents and colliery workers, as well as the rescue services, dug frantically to try to locate survivors. A total of 144 people perished; 28 adults and 116 children. One teacher was found shielding a child with her body. A mass funeral was held on October 25th. The children, mostly aged between 7-10 years old, were buried in separate marked graves on the hillside. This tragic disaster at Aberfan led to the Mines and Quarries Act of 1969 and the 1971 Regulations.

After this incident in Great Britain, Americas authorities in the coal industry were very much aware of what kind of devastation this type of disaster could bring to their own citizens. The president of the United Mine Workers issued a letter to all local districts reminding them of this disaster and for all districts to report any unsafe conditions in their area. A witness of Buffalo Creek, who was also affiliated with the UMWA, testified during an interview, that in response to letter issued by the Union president, he wrote a letter to the district president advising him of the dangerous condition of Buffalo Creek. He testified that nothing further was ever received from the district office concerning the dam, and as far as he knows, nothing was ever done. And he finished by saying that he did not make any further reports to the district office about them. And it has also been documented on numerous occasions, many different types of letter to assorted government officials were sent as far back as the mid 1960s, but again, nothing was ever done. The state government were more concerned about local streams being polluted more than they were about lives being lost. I suspect, after spending 20 years in the underground mines, you develop this, It cant happen to me, only the other guy complex, then sudden shock sets in when we become the other guy.

But who was, or is to be blamed for this disaster? First, let us define exactly what happened on that day. Some have called it a flood, disaster, catastrophe an act of God and even a mistake or accident. So, in-fact the American authorities did know what could happen . God didnt build any type of water reservoir in that hollow. It does rain and flood but I dont think putting the blame on God or nature explains what happened. Flooding occurs in almost every part of the state throughout the year. It is caused by rain or snow melt runoff. The water rises slowly in some cases and swiftly in others causing widespread personal property damage varying in degrees of damage done. Buffalo Creek was in no way a flood. The water that swept through the valley that morning never risen slowly, it came out in a tidal wave of mud, rock, assorted debris from homes and automobiles. Eyewitnesses recount seeing a massive wall of water that reached from one side of the valley to the other and at places, nearly 30 feet high. All that are left are disaster, catastrophe, mistake and accident. I guess you could call it a disaster of catastrophic proportions, which indeed it was. Were the dams a mistake? Yes, I think that any type reservoir which is constructed of porous material with no engineering design is a mistake. How about accident? That still remains to be one of the great mysteries that surround February 26, 1972. Hopefully, one day, it will be solved.





For more on the Buffalo Creek Disaster click the photo below.