Buffalo Creek Flood - Investigation

Investigation

Two commissions investigated the disaster. One, the Governor's Ad Hoc Commission of Inquiry, appointed by Governor Arch A. Moore, Jr., was made up entirely of members sympathetic to the coal industry or government officials whose departments might be complicit in the genesis of the flood. After Arnold Miller, then president of the United Mine Workers, and others were rebuffed by Gov. Moore regarding their request that a coal miner be added to the commission, a citizen's commission assembled to provide an independent review of the disaster. The Governor's Commission of Inquiry report called for legislation and further inquiry by the local prosecutor. The report by the Citizen's Commission concluded the Buffalo Creek-Pittston Coal Company was guilty of murdering at least 124 men, women and children. Additionally, the chair of the Citizen's Commission, Norman Williams, the Deputy Director of the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources, called publicly and in testimony before the legislature for the outlawing of coal strip mining throughout the state. He testified that strip mining could not exist as a profit making industry unless it is allowed by the state to pass on the costs of environmental damage to the private landowner or the public.

The state of West Virginia also sued the company for $100 million for disaster and relief damages, but Governor Arch A. Moore, Jr. settled for just $1 million, three days before leaving office in 1977. The lawyers for the plaintiffs, Arnold & Porter of Washington, D.C., donated a portion of their legal fees for the construction of a new community center. West Virginia has yet to build the center, though it was promised by Governor Moore in May 1972.

Gerald M. Stern, an attorney with Arnold & Porter, wrote a book entitled The Buffalo Creek Disaster about representing the victims of the flood. It includes descriptions of his experiences dealing with the political and legal environment of West Virginia, where the influence of large coal mining corporations is intensely significant to the local culture and communities. Sociologist Kai T. Erikson, son of distinguished psychologist and sociologist Erik Erikson, was called as an expert witness and published a study on the effects of the disaster entitled Everything In Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood (1978). Erikson's book later won the Sorokin Award, granted by the American Sociological Association for an "outstanding contribution to the progress of sociology."

Simpson-Housley and De Man (1989) found that, 17 years later, the residents of Buffalo Creek scored higher on a measure of trait anxiety in comparison to the residents of Kopperston, a nearby mining town that did not experience the flood.