The Human Meaning of Total Disaster

Abstract

In late 1972, we were asked by lawyers from the Washington, D.C., firm of Arnold and Porter to consult on the psychological effects of the Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, flood disaster. At that time a case claiming damages for “psychic impairment” was being prepared on behalf of more than 600 people who had survived the February 1972 flood. The flood resulted from massive corporate negligence in the form of dumping coal waste in a mountain stream in a manner that created an artificial dam, resulting in increasingly dangerous water pressure behind it. After several days of rain the dam gave way, and a massive, moving wall of “black water” (containing the coal waste), more than 30 feet high, roared through the narrow creek hollow, devastating the mining hamlets along the 17-mile valley. In less than an hour the water reached the foot of the hollow at Man, West Virginia, and in that time 125 people were killed and nearly 5,000 made homeless.