 One of the series of dams in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, would fail, causing a catastrophic domino effect, releasing some 130 million gallons of black water down onto the residence some 250 feet below. The disaster would cause a 10-20 feet high tidal wave washing down the creek and valley causing a death and destruction trail of 15 miles over a three hour period. Not only a local tragedy, but the event would highlight the dangers of such storage operations and the coal industry as a whole. The disaster would leave a cost of 50 million dollars in property damage and 15 million dollars in highway damage, but more importantly 125 were killed and nearly 5,000 made homeless. Today we look at the Buffalo Creek dam failure and subsequent flood on the 26th of February 1972 and as such I'm going to rate it here 8 on the patented Plain Difficult Disaster Scale. Buffalo Creek Valley is in the southwestern corner of West Virginia, 40 miles south of Charleston. The area has been used for mining activities all the way back to 1900. Development of the coal industry in the area increased when in 1914 a railway spur was built. By 1920 the creek was peppered with small mining camps that would eventually develop into small communities once the land was sold off to private residents. Many of the people lived on the narrow flat floodplain of around 400 feet wide along the creek. The hilly and narrow valleys of the area limited the overall population and because of this Logan County as a whole only had a peak population in 1950 of around 77,000. In 1945 the La Rado Mining Company opened mine number five and began activities in one of the forks off the creek named Middle Fork. The waste from the on-site coal preparation plant was sent to the mouth of the Middle Fork building a large waste bank called Bank One across the Hollow. Now a preparation plant washes coal of soil and rock and crushes it into graded sized trunks. The waste is largely coal contaminated water and soil. In 1959 the company began pumping wastewater into the hollow behind the waste bank one to settle out solids from spent wash water. The intention was to build a reservoir but the bank was too porous leading to water leaking out. This problem was later solved in the 1960s when much finer waste from a local strip mine was added to the bank which did hold back much more water. The mine was taken over by Buffalo Mining Company in 1964. The water was decanted from the reservoir into a smaller clear water pond for recycling for use in further preparation of coal. By 1966 waste bank one went 1500 feet down the Middle Fork and was 200 feet high at the face of the Buffalo Creek. A disaster in Wales UK would cast doubt upon the bank's stability which would result in the survey in 1966. As a side note Aberfan is most certainly on my list of disasters to cover. You after inspection the bank grew in height by another 50 feet as more and more waste was dumped on site. Going into 1967 a new dam behind the clear pond was created from waste 600 feet upstream from the original bank. By the end of the year the dam was extended allowing a 20 feet deep pool to form. By 1969 this dam and pool was not enough and this necessitated the construction of a third dam. This new dam number three was 600 feet upstream and was around 60 feet above the second dam. In 1970 the Pitston coal company took over the operations on the site. After extensive surveys of the Buffalo Mining Company's properties it was given a thumbs up as safe by the new owners. Wiringly in 1971 Pitston was cited for over 5,000 safety violations at its mines nationally. By early 1972 dam three had extended 465 feet across the fork along its front downstream crest. About 800,000 tons of coal waste had been dumped to form the dam and it was able to impound a pool of around 30 feet deep. Most of the dams in this area were only intended to hold water from rainfall or high levels of wastewater for shortish periods of time. However for dam three the pond was often full to the brim. During the construction of the dam trees and vegetation were not removed and instead just covered over with coal waste forming part of the upstream and downstream faces. Not only that but the waste had a foundation of sludge roughly around 50 feet thick. The comparison dam two had a sludge base of 100 feet thick. No segregation, layering or zoning of the material used to build down number three was undertaken to obtain maximum stability. No type of spearway was built into the design instead relying on excess water seepage through the dam augmented by an overflow pipe. Another dam number four built further up the fork was around 200 feet long and had a crest of 40 feet over its highest side. This construction did have a spearway however. This brings us on to the 22nd of February 1972 and a clean bit of health of dam number three from the Federal Coal Mine Inspector but not more than four days later the structure would experience a total failure. In the following days the region would experience rain showers. Worrying about the increase in dam freeze pool water level company strip mine superintendent Jack Kent checked the levels with a measuring stick at the lowest portion of the dam on the 24th of February. He discovered that the water stood just five feet below the dam's crest. The rains continued and the following day the level increased by one to two inches per hour. At 4.30 a.m. on the 26th Kent found his measuring stick almost covered with the water just 12 inches below the lowest part of the dam's crest. More worryingly the face of the dam was now oozing moisture. At 5.30 a.m. warnings were sent out to the local population by the sheriff's office. Half an hour later a team led by Kent went to the dam to attempt to create a relief pipe to try to reduce the water level. The water from this pipe flowed over dam two but would prove to be too little too late. Leading up to 8.00 a.m. the dam began to subside and slump allowing water to top over the crest. At 8.05 a.m. dam number three failed washing dams number one and two away. The wall of water flooded the burning refuse dump causing an explosion. The effluence carried on down the fork to the valley of Buffalo Creek. The flow of water further eroded the remains of dam number three increasing the speed of the release. Drainage of the pool continued into around 8.30 a.m. Around 6 million cubic feet of coal waste and other debris was carried downstream with around 90% of it escaping the middle fork with some reaching a distance of up to two miles. The 10 to 20 foot high flood wave traveled along the 15 mile Buffalo Creek valley at an average speed of around 5 miles per hour finally reaching the town of Mann at around 11 a.m. The disaster destroyed or damaged homes in Saunders, Pardi, Lourado, Lundale, Stowe, Latrobe, Robinette, Amherstale, Beko, Banco, Brayholm, Acoville, Crown and Kisler. In the immediate aftermath the disaster rescue operations and accurate reporting of the dead and missing were made difficult as access to the area by road had been disrupted with bridges destroyed and rail lines blocked or flooded. 125 were killed and 1,121 were injured and over 500 homes were uninhabitable leaving between 4 and 5,000 people homeless or without adequate shelter. Mann High School was used as a temporary refugee location for Buffalo Creek survivors. Republican governor Arch Moore announced the creation of a commission of inquiry to investigate the flood. It was formed of nine members most of whom were sympathetic to the coal industry. In response a citizens commission was set up to create an independent review of the disaster. Also the Senate subcommittee on labor started an investigation in late May 1972 using experts from the US Army Corps of Engineers who built a scale model of the valley including locations of the failed dams with so much destruction and death and an estimated damage cost in excess of $65 million. How did dam number three fell so catastrophically? Well much like the Kelly Barnes dam which would fail five years later the banks in the Middle Fork didn't have an official design meaning construction was not to a uniform standard and was not properly inspected and maintained. The United States Department of the Interior report highlighted five key causes for the failure of dam number three. The first was that the dam was not built to withstand the amount of water in the pool. This was due to the construction basically being a pile of dumped coal waste. No spillway or other adequate water level controls were built into the dam. On top of that there was no way for removing water once it had entered the pool behind the dam. The small pipe installed during the evolution of the dam was insufficient and was too high to really make a difference. Third the sludge on which the dam was placed was inadequate as the foundation led to seepage and subsidence across the main structure. Fourth the whip for the dam was cited as an issue as it impeded any water through the bank leading to a large of an intended amount of water being held back. This was because the dam was meant to be for water recycling instead of permanent retention. And finally the fifth cause was the inadequate quality and grading of construction material which consisted of coal waste including fine coal, shale, clay and mine rubbish. Furthermore the pipe that had been placed inside the dam, the one that was too high to make any difference, also had a double failure of weakening the already poor material choice. The ad hoc committee focused on improving legislation recommending all dams or impoundments constructed of coal refuse to be properly zoned for control of seepage rates, requiring all dams or impoundments higher than 10 feet to be instrumented and monitored on a regular and frequent basis and requiring all dams or impoundments to have a foolproof decant systems and or spillways designed by and constructed under the direction of a registered professional engineer with a completion in the design and construction of dams. The citizens investigation was far more damming of the Buffalo Mining Company and its later owners the Pittston Coal Group stating in its conclusions the company was grossly negligent in constructing and operating the refuse dam on its property. The company violated state and federal law since the dam was never approved for proper design and maintenance and the company's first concern has been to increase its profits by using the same refuse dam to dispose of clarified wastewater and store water. Needless to say the mining company would have a number of lawsuits to answer to. In attempt to absolve itself of any blame, Pittston Coal put out a press release not long after the flood stating that the disaster was an act of God and the dam was incapable of holding the water God poured into it. Around 600 survivors of the flood sued Pittston Coal Company seeking $64 million. A settlement was later reached in June 1974 at a fraction of the cost of $13.4 million, roughly $82 million in today's money. Another law suit brought on behalf of the child survivors which was again settled in June 74 for $4.8 million, around $29 million today. The state of West Virginia also took Pittston to court for a $100 million lawsuit to cover disaster and relief damages but Governor Archane Moore settled the case for a measly $1 million three days before leaving office in 1977. Moore had been accused during his time as governor of corruption and this settlement didn't do much to disprove it. This left a bill of around $9 million to be picked up by the state of West Virginia to pay the US Army Corps of Engineers for recovery operations. And what seems to be a very foul tasting trend with disasters of this type no criminal charges were brought against the company for their negligence. We know the lessons were never properly learnt from Buffalo Creek as the Kingston fly ash spill would happen some 36 years later and there are still many coal impoundments that offer risk to the communities that live nearby. Thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed the video. This is a plain difficult production. 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