After the Disaster: Re-creating Community and Well-Being at Buffa ...

Chapter 1

Buffalo Creek Before, During, and Soon After the Flood

So the residents of Buffalo Creek were fairly well off in the early days of 1972. Most of the men were employed and earning good wages, and if the hollow did not quite reach the national mean on the conventional indices of wealth, the people nonetheless owned their own houses, paid modest taxes, enjoyed a certain measure of security, and were generally satisfied with their lot. They had survived the crisis of automation (of the coal mines in the early 1950s) and were even beginning to profit from it, and to that extent, at least, they were one of the most affluent groups in an otherwise impoverished region.

—Sociologist Kai Erikson, Everything in Its Path