| Chapter 1: | Buffalo Creek Before, During, and Soon After the Flood |
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Production and profitability grew at most of the mines along Buffalo Creek in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1970 The Pittston Company, a powerful conglomerate based in New York City, purchased BMC and invested heavily in expanding operations at eight of the mines along Buffalo Creek—including the mine at Three Forks—under the name of Buffalo Mining Company. During the next two years, federal and state agencies conducted a number of routine inspections of the dams and gob ponds above Three Forks. Inspectors raised questions about the structural integrity of dam #3, but they did not require major renovations. Concern about the safety of the gob ponds increased nonetheless, especially among miners and their families who lived at or near Three Forks, and particularly during periods of sustained, heavy rains.
This is exactly what happened in the days immediately before February 26, 1972. Heavy rains had been falling for two days. Some of the miners who lived at Three Forks arranged among themselves to check on the gob ponds every few hours because they were close to overflowing. Gob pond #3 worried them the most. It covered about twenty acres on the surface and was forty feet deep at the edge of an earthen dam (#3) that was holding back hundreds of tons of wastewater, oily sludge, and mine debris. The miners feared that, if dam #3 collapsed, the fluid mass of its gob pond would race downhill, gain momentum, and wash away the other gob ponds and dams. The cumulative mass would pour into Three Forks and then race down the valley through the other coal camps.
At about 9:00 p.m. on Friday, February 25, the U.S. Weather Bureau in Huntington, West Virginia, announced flash flood warnings for the Buffalo Creek area. Two hours later, Jack Kent, a BMC supervisor at the Three Forks mine, inspected dam #3 and noticed that the gob pond was almost full. He drove down to Three Forks and warned BMC employee Dennis Gibson and some of the residents at Three Forks that the dam was of concern to him. He encouraged the residents to relocate for the night to the grade school at Lorado, a few miles downstream. Several of the families did so. Off-duty miners at Three Forks began checking on dam #3 every few hours. Jack Kent then phoned his boss, Steve Dasovich, who was in charge of all mining operations along Buffalo Creek, and reported his concerns about dam #3.