And so, with childhood experiences like these, I was appalled, but not particularly surprised, in 1972, when I read of the massive devastation that occurred down along Buffalo Creek, West Virginia. I read that sixteen coal camps—including one named Latrobe, just like my hometown—had been swept away when slurry ponds suddenly collapsed above them. I read that nothing was left of them. I read that there had been no warning. I read that all the victims had been caught totally by surprise, sleeping in their beds like helpless infants and totally unaware of the danger. Even then I had some doubts about the sweeping absolutism of these claims. Few, if any, of the many coal miners I had known were likely to be helpless infants totally unaware of the dangers around them, their families, and their coal camps. The same was true of many of their children—kids I had known growing up.
What did surprise me, and please me, was that the disaster at Buffalo Creek got so much attention—so quickly—from so many powerful newspapers, relief and charitable organizations, political leaders, and Congress. In the years since then, I have been glad to see that a considerable amount of stimulating and sympathetic research has been published about the disaster. However, I have long lamented the fact that so little has been written about the many concerted efforts to rebuild the communities along Buffalo Creek and to repair the lives of its many victims who survived the flood. It seems to me that the published literature has not gone far enough to tell us what has been sustained and accomplished by the good people of Buffalo Creek and by the people and organizations from outside Buffalo Creek who have cared about it. But then again, this is a common pattern. There are many more books about disasters—particularly about the more sensational and destructive features of disasters—than about the arduous, frustrating, and decades-long efforts to recover from disasters. Apparently, the general public tires of hearing about a particular disaster after a week or two. Other disasters “seem to come along” and push earlier disasters into the dark recesses of the public’s memory, except for occasional reminders in the form of best-selling “disaster books.”