High Water Blues: The Buffalo Creek Flood and Differing Paradigms for Appalachian Challenges

The Buffalo Creek flood of February 26, 1972, was one of the pre-eminent disasters of Appalachia's history. When a West Virginia coal company's impoundment dam for coal slurry gave way, the resulting flood killed 125 people, injured over 1,100 more, and rendered more than 4,000 homeless. The two best-known book length studies of Buffalo Creek offer different paradigms for the challenges that face the people of Appalachia. The first of those books, "The Buffalo Creek Disaster" (1976), was written by Gerald M. Stern, a lawyer who worked for the firm that represented plaintiffs in Buffalo Creek-related litigation. Stern's book focuses on themes that are likely to be familiar to many students of Appalachian life -- e.g., the problems facing Appalachian communities where economic and community life are oriented around resource extraction that is controlled by a single corporate entity. Stern focuses on the problems that face ordinary citizens challenging a powerful and politically well-connected corporation. The second of those books, "Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood" (1978), was written by sociologist Kai T. Erikson. In contrast to Stern's focus on economic justice for individual flood victims, Erikson examines how community-wide trauma can fracture the bonds of community within Appalachian communities. In these communities that tend to value continuity and sometimes resist change, an incident like the Buffalo Creek flood can expose and exacerbate pre-existing social divisions. Both of these paradigms illuminate the challenges that other Appalachian communities are likely to face in the future.