| Chapter 1: | Buffalo Creek Before, During, and Soon After the Flood |
Table 1.1. (continued)
| angry and enduring protests and outrage from many survivors and interest groups. | |
| d. Controversies erupt regarding some appointments to various government investigations into the disaster. | |
| The U.S. Department of Interior Assistant Secretary for Mineral Resources Hollis M. Dole orders the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Mines to establish a task force to “study and analyze hazards associated with the disposal and storage of coal mine waste materials” and to include the Three Forks dam failure. (Nugent, Death at Buffalo Creek, 159) | |
| The U.S. Department of Interior commissions a study of the Three Forks dam failure by its Bureau of Reclamation. | |
| The U.S. Senate Labor Subcommittee starts an investigation of the Buffalo Creek disaster. It requests an in-depth analysis of the Buffalo Creek flood by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. | |
| 1972 | MARCH 28 |
| Pittston approves BMC setting up a disaster claims office in Man to process survivors’ claims for property damages. BMC begins settling claims with survivors for property damages for up to $10,000, the West Virginia statutory limit for each case of wrongful death. | |
| 1972 | APRIL |
| Governor Moore’s Ad Hoc Commission holds public hearings in Charleston about the Buffalo Creek disaster. Controversial statements are made by many witnesses, including BMC president I. C. Spotte, BMC vice president Steve Dasovich, Pittston engineer Richard Yates, and flood survivor Wayne Brady Hatfield, among others. | |
| 1972 | MAY |
| The U.S. Senate Labor Subcommittee holds two days of hearings on the dam collapse at Three Forks focusing on the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Mines actions and investigations. A Bureau of Mines official claims that the 1969 Federal Coal Mining Health and Safety Act only gives the Bureau of Mines authority to protect miners working in coal mines— not the miners or their families in their homes. | |
| The Citizens’ Committee to Investigate the Buffalo Creek Disaster charges that Governor Moore’s Ad Hoc Commission was “mainly a whitewash packed with people who had a personal interest in the findings.”9 The committee forms a twenty-member panel to independently investigate the disaster. | |
| The state of West Virginia announces plans to build a modern, concrete, two-lane highway up through Buffalo Creek Hollow to replace the damaged Route 16. It also announces plans to build new water and sewer systems and a number of subsidized housing developments. |