• Government Aid

  The Red Cross and Salvation Army set up mass care shelters immediately after the disaster to provide food and lodging for the survivors. A consortium of federal, state, and local government agencies was brought together under the President's Office of Emergency Preparedness (0.E.P). The railroads were the first thing to be rebuilt and the mines were operating again within a week of the flood. Debris was then removed from the Buffalo Creek communities, bridges and the road in the valley were temporarily repaired, and trailer camps were installed to house those whose homes were destroyed.

  A Phase II plan was announced by the O.E.P. in May of 1972: a large-scale redevelopment of “ Buffalo Valley,” as it was now called by agency officials, scheduled a variety of goals for completion within the next two years. Included in the plan were new water, sewage and waste disposal systems; public transportation in the valley and a connecting state highway; health care, recreation and public safety services; and permanent housing for the disaster victims.

  Two years later, construction had just begun on the water and sewage systems, the temporary road was still in use, public transportation consisted of antiquated buses no longer used by the school district, and fewer than 100 permanent homes had been built since the disaster.

  By 1975, $27 million in flood emergency funds had been spent to build a highway that took 400 badly needed home sites through right-of-way proceedings and went nowhere, dead-ending at the coal tipples at the head of Buffalo Creek with no plans by the state highway department for an extension. Work on the other goals had been postponed indefinitely.

  In 1976, roughly 100 families were still displaced, living in the last of the mobile home camps set up by the Federal Government. Efforts to incorporate the communities along Buffalo Creek so that the residents could levy their own taxes and provide public services had been rejected by the Logan County Board of Supervisors.

  Government aid ran out of steam, money, and leadership. There was emergency relief but little redevelopment.

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