Buffalo Creek Disaster

One of the deadliest floods in US history; it occurred in February, 1972, in southern West Virginia's Buffalo Creek hollow and is attributed to negligent strip mining and heavy rain; 125 died and over 4,000 people were left homeless

References in periodicals archive ?

In the course of the investigation, which also included reviewing piles of engineering reports, Spadaro was haunted by his memories of an earlier catastrophe, now infamous in coal country, known as the Buffalo Creek Disaster. In 1972, Spadaro, then a research engineer for the West Virginia School of Mines, had been dispatched to investigate a coal slurry spill in Buffalo Creek, W.

Under mined: when a flood of toxic mining sludge wreaked havoc in Appalachia, how did the White House respond? By letting the coal company off the hook and firing the whistleblower

After the Buffalo Creek disaster, the Nixon administration introduced a weaker bill that would have given states chief responsibility for regulation, overseen by the Bureau of Mines--then widely considered a political arm of the mining industry.

Rape of the Appalachians

I was a college student at the time of the Buffalo Creek disaster. The experience taught me that not only miners were expendable; women and children were fair game too.