Events Leading To The Buffalo Creek Disaster
1904: The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad completed its Charleston to Logan, WV run and thus opened up Logan County's coal to east coast markets.
1912: The first spur line was laid up Buffalo Creek by the C&O Railroad and the first coal camps on the Creek were built.
1945: The Lorado Coal Company (a local concern now defunct) opened Mine No 5 on Middle Fork of Buffalo Creek and began producing coal. Coal-refuse was dumped at the mouth of Middle Fork, one of the three stream-beating hollows that come together to form Buffalo Creek.
1947: Lorado Coal Company built a preparation plant for cleaning the coal produced by its mines in the Buffalo Creek area. The plant used 500,000 gallons of water a day and discharged black sludge directly into Buffalo Creek.
1964: Buffalo Mining Company, another local concern, bought out Lorado, Coal Company. B.M.C. inherited two problems: 1.) large quantities of water had accumulated behind the refuse dump on Middle Fork; 2.) new state anti-pollution laws prohibited draining the black, sludge-filled water from the preparation plant straight into Buffalo Creek. The company solved both problems by building a coal-waste retaining dam above the big refuse dump. The pond behind the dam allowed waste materials to settle out of the dirty water. The clean water was then pumped back to the cleaning plant to be used again or allowed to filter through the dam to end up in Buffalo Creek.
1966: After a coal-waste dump in South-Aberfan, Wales, gave way killing 147 people, then-Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall asked the U.S. Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines to conduct a joint investigation of potentially dangerous slag heaps in, the coal-mining sections of the United States. A USGS geologist inspected 38 dams in West Virginia, including the one on Buffalo Creek. His report stated that the Buffalo Creek dam was basically "unstable," that "the bank subject to large wash-out on north side from overflow of lake."
1967: In March, the Interior Department's Report on Conditions of 38 West Virginia Coal Waste Dams was given to the Governor, senators, congressmen, and local officials in southern West Virginia Four of the dams were cited as in need of immediate repair and were fixed by coal company crews and State Highway Commission workers. Nothing else was done about inspecting other dams or correcting those listed in the Report.
Buffalo Mining Company's dam #1 had silted up and it failed causing a steam explosion in the burning refuse dump and doing damage at Saunders, the first community below the dam. The company built dam #2, which was constructed of coal wastes dumped about 600 feet upstream of dam #1.
1968: In February, residents on Buffalo Creek feared the collapse of the dams and the refuse pile and wrote the Governor asking that he do something about it. Inspectors from the Public Service Commission and Water Resources Division looked at the dams but no further action was taken.
1969: Dam #2 was silting up so Buffalo Mining Company began dumping tons of gob 600 feet further up the valley to form a third dam.
1970: In June the Pittston Company acquired Buffalo Mining Company and completed the half finished dam #3. This enormous "filtration bank " extended 550 feet across the valley, was over 400 feet wide from front to back, and was at least 45 feet deep. Dams #1 and #2 had impounded relatively small ponds but dam #3 blocked a 700-acre watershed impounding over 130 million gallons of water.
1971: Dam #3 collapsed in February. One-half of the downstream side slumped. There was no flood, but black water bubbled up into the impoundments behind dam #2. The company dumped in more coal refuse to fill in the break in the dam.
1972: At the beginning of the year, about 5000 people lived on Buffalo Creek, representing approximately ten percent of Logan County's population. There were over 1000 working miners living on the Creek and they were enjoying the relative prosperity that their $40-a-day wages provided them.
February 1, dam #3 was being added to at a rate of about 1000 tons of refuse a day, carried from the preparation plant to the dam in 30 ton trucks. The company was operating eight mines in the vicinity and ran all the coal through the preparation plant above the dams. The plant was pumping about 500 tons of water-saturated waste into the pond behind dam #3 every day.
February 22, a federal mine inspector and the company safety engineer observed the dams and found conditions satisfactory.
February 25, fed by heavy rains, the water behind dam #3 was rising one or two inches per hour.
February 26, at 1:30 am the water was only twelve inches from the dam's crest and oozing through the surface of the dam.
February 26, at 8:03 am dam #3 failed. Dams #2 and #1 were carried away. The wall of water caused an explosion in the burning refuse pile before cascading into the valley of Buffalo Creek.
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