This article originally provided by Evansville Courier and Press

February 26, 2008

Remembering the disaster at Buffalo Creek

Thirty-six years ago this morning, a 10-story earthen dam at the head of Buffalo Creek Hollow in West Virginia ripped apart with the force of an earthquake.

Fueled by days of heavy rains, a 30-foot wall of black water and burning slag covered everything in its path for more than 15 miles.

The death toll was 125 — mostly small children, the elderly and the infirm who weren't nimble enough to scurry up the mountainside fast enough to stay ahead of the deadly ooze. Seven bodies were never found, including that of a former coal miner who had both legs amputated. Three were so badly mangled they were never identified.

Three weeks earlier, I hired on at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph, greener than the keys on the manual typewriters. Buffalo Creek is about two hours away. Because I was so ignorant, it was rightly believed that I would be of more value taking dictation from those who knew what they were doing.

But I made a few trips to Buffalo Creek on my own time and was numbed by the destruction. Hundreds of houses were destroyed. Railroads were twisted. Power poles were swept away.

I was told that some victims were roasted alive in the swift-flowing caldron of gob that claimed faces and features before it took lives.

I was told that one man tried to outrun the flood. When he was found dead, one of his arms had been torn off at the shoulder.

I was told that stray dogs were shot in the days after the flood. There was no food for them and survivors feared the animals would find victims before rescue crews.

A woman remembered a big black wave that was more oily tar than water. She saw a red house riding the crest with panicked souls inside. They found the bodies days later. Dead.

Waste materials from the mine were deposited in the earthen impoundment on property belonging to Pittston Coal Co. The woman's husband worked for the mine.

He survived, but more than a dozen of his relatives didn't. It took the man many hours to walk the short distance home because he kept getting lost. Familiar landmarks had been washed away. Imagine a scene of nuclear winter without the bomb blast.

He helped identify several bodies. He also helped suddenly homeless friends and neighbors build twig shelters to ward off the winter wind.

The woman told me her husband was never the same after that. He had black lung, but that wasn't what killed him in 1975, she said. It was his nerves. Shot.

I went back to Buffalo Creek about 10 years ago. There's a monument to the dead in a small park a dozen or so miles from where the dam failed. The black storm line was still visible on some trees.

A guy at a convenience store told me most survivors of the disaster had moved out of the hollow. Some were packed up and gone before the last funeral.

Some thought they could ride it out, but became shell-shocked by the first rainstorm.

I asked what he remembered most about the morning of Feb. 26, 1972. Was it the helicopters ferrying the injured to hospitals? Was it the temporary morgue set up at the elementary school?

The guy shook his head. It was a young man who had blistered feet from running on the hot sludge. A big toe, he recalled, was only attached by a tiny flap of skin.

I look back at the ill-fated hollow whenever we have a killer tornado or whenever there's a loss of innocent lives for no apparent reason.

Just when we think there can be no greater sadness, no greater hurt, two words are all that's needed.

Buffalo Creek.
— Garret Mathews