| Chapter 1: | Buffalo Creek Before, During, and Soon After the Flood |
Table 1.1. (continued)
| Coal companies provide radio-equipped trucks and other machinery for search, rescue, and clearing operations. | |
| Civil Defense helicopters arrive and aid in rescue efforts at the coal camps isolated at the upper end of Buffalo Creek Valley. | |
| 1972 | FEBRUARY 27 (Sunday) |
| The White House (President Nixon is traveling in the Far East) announces that $20 million will be made available immediately in disaster relief funds to the relief effort at Buffalo Creek. | |
| The Salvation Army, Red Cross, and other nongovernmental relief agencies arrive and start providing meals and many services to flood victims at Man High School and other locations. | |
| Many homeless survivors take up temporary residence in the hallways and classrooms at Man High School. | |
| 1972 | FEBRUARY 28–MARCH 12 |
| Regional staff members of the U.S. Office of Emergency Preparedness arrive in Man and set up offices and services. | |
| The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) establishes a relief office to start planning and building thirteen temporary trailer parks with more than 700 trailers for more than 2,500 survivors. | |
| Units from the West Virginia State Department of Highways, West Virginia Employment Office, and Southern West Virginia Regional Health Council establish offices in Man and begin delivering services. | |
| On March 2, Governor Arch A. Moore forms an “Ad Hoc Commission” of nine members to study the Buffalo Creek flood. Composition of this commission is immediately criticized by some Buffalo Creek survivors and some interest groups for having a pro–coal-company bias. | |
| News media in Logan, Charleston, and other West Virginia cities publish reports of emerging issues, controversies, and conflicts related to the Buffalo Creek flood and reactions to it, including: | |
| a. A controversy develops between the office of Governor Moore and officials at BMC as to whether the state’s antipollution laws were to blame for the collapse of the dams because they prohibited BMC from draining off excess water from the gob ponds and discharging it into the creeks. | |
| b. Governor Moore’s office charges that there is an antigovernment bias in news media reporting on the disaster at Buffalo Creek. It declares that Buffalo Creek Hollow is off-limits to news-media personnel (this order is lifted within a few days because of reactions to it). | |
| c. A Pittston spokesman is quoted in the Charleston Gazette as saying that the flood was “an act of God” (Nugent, Death at Buffalo Creek, 156) and that the gob pond at Three Forks has been safe. This report ignites |