After the Disaster: Re-creating Community and Well-Being at Buffalo Creek since the Notorious Coal-Mining Disaster in 1972
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After the Disaster: Re-creating Community and Well-Being at Buffa ...

Chapter 1:  Buffalo Creek Before, During, and Soon After the Flood
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Everybody tried to help out as best they could. I recall one family from up the hollow come in that night all wet and cold. One of their little boys looked around at all the people in here. His eyes git real wide and he says to me real loud, “Lady, your floor here sure is muddy. You need to mop-up!”
Everybody bust-out laughin’ at that.15

Sunday, February 27

On Sunday the pace of external relief efforts picked up appreciably on the lower reaches of Buffalo Creek as news of the destructiveness of the flood spread throughout the United States.

Details of the disaster were now being broadcast to the rest of the nation, and the roadblock at Man was crowded with survivors who wanted to get out, newsmen and relatives who wanted to get in, and a constant traffic of rescue teams passing back and forth.16

President Nixon sent condolences to the survivors while he was traveling in Asia. The White House announced that $20 million would be made available in disaster relief funds. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arrived in Man with dozens of bulldozers, trucks, and other heavy equipment to clear debris and start erecting temporary roads, bridges, water supply points, and sanitary facilities. Public health agencies started immunizing survivors against typhoid fever. The Salvation Army and the Red Cross started providing meals and clothing to flood victims at Man High School, where hundreds of homeless survivors took up temporary residence in the halls and classrooms. According to Erikson, most survivors had to wait for and rely upon aid from external agencies because they were still too shocked to help themselves. They were frantically seeking news about the status of their relatives and friends in Buffalo Creek’s other coal camps.

Most of the people of Buffalo Creek were still numbed by the savagery of the disaster, still trying to make sense of their shattered world. The first visitors to the hollow, aside from relief workers called to the scene, were relatives who, made frantic by the early news broadcasts, hurried home to see for themselves.17