Scholarship on the disaster also helps us get to know the peoplethe victims, the survivorsinvolved. State officials requested a few minor alterations to the impoundment. Judge Hall ruled that the plaintiffs survivor-syndrome claims might exceed $10,000 In addition to coal waste dams used in mining and coal washing operations, there are also more than 1,400 coal ash impoundments used mostly at or near coal-fired powerplants in the U.S. 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. I was so scared. Buffalo Creek Disaster YE HAO GBL395 Summer 2014 Synopsis: . It wasnt long after the flood that lawsuits were brought against Pittston Coal, the company responsible for the slurry dams. March 1972Arnold & Porter agreed to represent the Buffalo Creek Citizens WVPB News. On February 26, 1972, tragedy struck a small mining community in the coalfields of southern West Virginia. Your account has been registered, and you are now logged in. February 26, 2022, marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most devastating mine disasters in U.S. history. An impoundment dam burst in a coal mining West Virginia town, precipitating a deadly flood that killed or injured more than a thousand people, and left many more residents homeless. May 13, 1974Judge Hall denied motion for partial summary judgment as to personal Human relationships in this community had been derived from traditional bonds of kinship and neighborliness. 1966A United Kingdom coal-waste dump in South Aberfam, Wales similar 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. West Virginia: Disaster in the Hollow, Time, Monday, March 13, 1972. For additional stories at this website on the history of coal and coal mining, see for example, the following: Thanks for visiting and if you like what you find here, please. The Buffalo Creek Disaster - Los Angeles County Bar Association EN English Deutsch Franais Espaol Portugus Italiano Romn Nederlands Latina Dansk Svenska Norsk Magyar Bahasa Indonesia Trke Suomi Latvian Lithuanian esk Unknown They lost loved ones, their homes, their neighbors, their community. It also held coal reserves of 1.5 billion tons, mostly high-grade metallurgical coal used in steel-making. Vicki Smith, Feds OK Coal Slurry Dam Expansion, GazetteMail.com, March 25, 2013. The United States declined to sue Pittston for cleanup costs. 16, No. Stern met with plaintiffs and obtained settlement authority. In 1977, Gov. ofBMC. HD Media news reporter Dylan Vidovich can be contacted via email at dvidovich@hdmediallc.com. 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. On Saturday, the community showed they are still standing with a room full of survivors coming . amzn_assoc_asins = "0821415565,1467135496,0345543254,0618872248"; EPA had initially estimated the spill would take four-to-six weeks to clean up, however, three years later they were still cleaning up. There was a problem saving your notification. Invalid password or account does not exist. The first was an ad hoc commission established by West Virginia Governor Arch Moore. Tom Price, Who Killed Buffalo Creek?, Rolling Stone, January 3, 1974. According to the U.S. EPA, there are over 1,000 operating coal ash waste ponds and landfills, plus many hundreds of retired coal ash disposal sites. Stern met with plaintiffs and obtained settlement authority. 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. Each of the plaintiffs ended up with about $13,000. In addition to the deaths, the disaster injured 1,100 and left more than 4,000 people homeless. of 38 West Virginia Coal Waste Dams warning about Aberfam. They flew me out and we landed right here on this road. The experts concluded that the victims suffered from According to some, however, there were positive changes that did come to coalfield and regulatory practices in the years immediately following the disaster. 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. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. A few helicopters were used initially until local miners and others, and the National Guard, began clearing debris and building makeshift roads and bridges. At one point, West Virginia Governor Arch Moore, complaining that the states image was getting a bad rap from the media, closed the Buffalo Creek area to reporters. March 5, 1972. Jack Spadaro, a mine safety investigator and environmental specialist, has made it his lifes work to prevent such disasters from happening again. Property damage is estimated to be upward of $50 million or more. 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. Click for copy. Earl Lambert, From The Mountainsides: Many Saw It Happen, Logan Banner (Logan, WV), February 28, 1972. And it also continued dumping its coal wastes in the area as well, absent the use of watery waste dams. All we had was the clothes on our backs and I prep, I put back not a lot of food, but as much as Janet (his wife) will let me, and I prepare for nuclear war. 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 . If you forget it, you'll be able to recover it using your email address. John G. Morgan, Angered Citizens Plan Own Logan Flood Probe, Charleston Gazette, March 7, 1972. but then Gov. A few years later, construction began on water and sewage systems, and some permanent housing was built. A final federal strip mine bill, however, would not be signed into law until 1977. to Logan, W.Va., line making Logan Countys coal easily transportable to national George Vecsey, Two Rival Inquiries Are Begun into Flood in West Virginia, New York Times, March 12, 1972, p. 70. It took a mere 15 minutes to totally fail, Spadaro said. After the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster, Gov. 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. The U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor had already begun an investigation, and by late May 1972 also began a series of public hearings on the Buffalo Creek disaster. Pearl Woodrum letter, Feb 1968 Interiors study had been prompted by a coal dam failure in Aberfan, Wales in 1966 a catastrophe that had killed 147 people, including 116 school children. They were filled to capacity, holding tons of coal wastewater. The citizens commission report, formally titled. In fact, the company was cited for over 5,000 safety violations at its mines nationally in 1971. unstable and that the bank [was] subject to large wash-out on [the] north side Senator Ed Muskie (D-NH) in one photo, then running for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination, shown campaigning ahead of the New Hampshire primary. 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). Arnold and Porter gave Pittston a $32.5 million written settlement proposal. 3 was rising one or two inches per hour. Approximately $5.5 million was provided for property and wrongful-death damages, with approximately $8 million for the psychic impairment claims. Richard Martin's 2015 book, "Coal Wars". of their damage claims. Subsequent Note mud lines on the building at left, marking flood level. Buffalo Creek Mine Disaster: Feb. 26, 1972. An airplane crashes. Youve still got but it was gone, just like being somewhere and a volcano went off and wiped out your entire village, and even after it was all over with, they went through there and tore out our little road and destroyed all of our little communities, and the people that wanted to couldnt even move back to where they used to live at., It hurts, Hall said. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Children walk along the tracks in what remains of their community along Buffalo Creek on Feb. 27, 1972, The people are prisoners of the coal industry.. In 1974, the 645 Buffalo Creek residents suing Pittston Coal settled for $13.5 million, which amounted to approximately $13,000 paid out to each plaintiff. 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. ITHAKA. Gazette-Mail/L. What was the actual settlement agreement in the Buffalo Creek disaster? A Town Stood Here, Life, October 10, 1972. MAN, W.Va. (AP) The day before the disaster hit, Perry Harvey went fishing on Buffalo Creek for one reason. [I]f you dont do something, she wrote, prophetically, were all going to be washed away. Her letter did bring a state inspector to visit the dams. The Buffalo Creek flood was a disaster that occurred on February 26, 1972, when the Pittston Coal Company's coal slurry impoundment dam #3, located on a hillside in Logan County, West Virginia, burst, four days after having been declared 'satisfactory' by a federal mine inspector. By DYLAN VIDOVICH University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Appalachian Studies Association, Inc. Journal of American Studies, Vol. October 6, 1982: Buffalo Creek flood settlement. right below the dam. At 8 a.m. on Feb. 26, 1972, 130 million gallons of water and coal sludge burst through a dam, poured into Buffalo Creek, and violently surged through 16 . 3 above its impounded sediment. (BMCs) dam #1 fails causes a steam explosion and damaging the Saunders community Jack Doyle, Buffalo Creek Disaster: 1972, 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. The toxic coal slurry poured into Kentuckys Coldwater and Wolf creeks, then to the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River, traveling more than 70 miles downstream, and eventually reaching the Ohio River, with blackwater visible at Cincinnati. Thomas Andrews' "Killing for Coal". Mine Safety and Health Administration) to the Buffalo Creek area a few days after the disaster. After its pH level and temperature were checked, the creek was returned to the Division of Natural Resources trout stocking program in 2006 after a 34-year hiatus. When forced to give up these long-standing ties with familiar places and people, the . At a protest meeting held in the Buffalo Grade School in Accoville a month after the flood, an older woman stood up and shouted out: Ive lived up at the top of the hollow for a long time. Russell Mokhiber, Buffalo Creek, Chapter 5, Corporate Crime & Violence: Big Business Power and the Abuse of the Public Trust, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1998. U. S. Department of Interior, Task Force to Study Coal Waste Hazards, Preliminary Analysis of the Coal Refuse Dam Failure at Saunders, West Virginia February 26, 1972, Washington, D.C., March 12, 1972. An email message containing instructions on how to reset your password has been sent to the e-mail address listed on your account. It took just over 15 minutes. 2/3 (152/153) (2018), pp. Journal of Appalachian Studies, Vol. 4, Special Focus: Special issue on Post Disaster Societies (2011), pp. The number stern settled on was 32.5 million dollars. 0 ratings 0% found this document useful (0 votes) Still other operations use injection techniques to pump various coal wastes underground. That summer, Brunty cried in fear with every storm and strong wind gust that shook her temporary trailer. (AP Photo/John Raby). West Virginia Congressman Ken Heckler (D) had offered a bill in 1971 to ban all surface coal mining. Part of that is to tell the survivors' story, to make it impossible . Chad Motrie's 2003 history of Appalachian strip mining. A few weeks later, on February 22nd, a federal mine inspector and the company safety engineer observed the dams and found conditions satisfactory. Mining community in the Hollow, Time, Monday, March 25, 2013 visit the dams for and! 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