Customer Reviews

Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood

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This was an excellent book, well-written and informative. Using Buffalo Creek as the fulcrum, Erikson provides readers with a good introduction of communities and trauma. It is interesting to note the similarities and differences between the aftermaths of Sept 11 and Buffalo Creek. Erikson's book is a must read for social scientists and anyone interested in creative non-fiction writing.

In the summer of 1948, we lived in Lorado, West Virginia (Logan County). The Buffalo Creek ran behind `our' house, while a road and the tracks of the C&O Railroad ran just beyond our front yard. The photo on page 37 shows those tracks that we often walked from Lorado towards Man, WV. It could well be a picture of our former front yard.

I , of course, remember the news accounts of the 1972 disaster.

So, I have a personal outlook at this sociological follow-up of the lives wrecked when the earth dam and mine tailings gave way.

Kai Erickson has done a deeply moving and eloquent account of the ramifications of this recent tragedy.

I recommend it to all interested in mankind and the factors that fall upon our fellow travelers as we all 'work our way through life.'

Excellent descriptions of how survivors dealt with the total destruction of everything they had built and accomplished in their entire lives. All of this was taken from them by a "man made" damn and wall of water within minutes. Mr. Erikson did a wonderful job of relating to the people from the coal camps and realizing what their lives had been about......he truely shows the suffering involved in this disaster.

This was a very intersting book for me. I was looking for information on this flood & I found the information plus more. I didn't really realize it was going to deal so much with "how the person works" in tragedies. I came to understand the Appalacian people as a unique group. I also understand how & why the flood started. But I also learned a lot about how people's "mind" deals with events such as this type of tragedy. And I also can understand how people in general, including myself, react to events in much smaller every-day problems. I can now understand many of my "reactions" & how they are normal & very unique to each individual. It helped me a lot Plus I learned a lot about the needless tragedy. It made me think a little. Good Read.

I was 12, growing up a couple of counties away, when the dam burst at Buffalo Creek in 1972. It was just the latest disaster in less than a decade to afflict what I thought was my cursed native state: The Silver Bridge collapse, the explosion at the Farmington No. 9 mine and the Marshall University plane crash.

This book is in three parts, the first describing the disaster, the second a historical overview of Appalachia in general and the Buffalo Creek area in particular. The third is on the effects on the survivors of the flood.

Though the Buffalo Creek flood happened more than 30 years ago, its lessons are as current as the destruction of New Orleans.

Kai Erickson writes quite well for a sociologist and the book only begins to drag a bit at the end, in the sociology part. Maybe it's just the (justifiable) litany of complaints from the survivors. If this account is any measure, the survivors of Hurricane Katrina will be suffering in psyche long after their material losses have been recouped.

Anyone with further interest in the Buffalo Creek flood ought to also read Gerald Stern's "The Buffalo Creek Disaster," written from the point of view of one of the lawyers who took part in the resulting litigation.

In February of 1972, the town of Buffalo Creek in West Virginia was devastated by a flood, which was, in a way, 'man-made'. Water from heavy rains collected in a pile of coal slag, eventually working through and sweeping the town, killing over a hundred people. Erikson recounts this disaster in his first chapter, but devotes most of the book to describing the culture of Appalachia, and how it affected the people's psychology and recovery.

For the most part this is a sociological study. Erikson examines the people of West Virginia and Buffalo Creek to discover why they think and act as they do. Culture, it turns out, made this disaster even worse than it might have been in other communities. Survivors could not handle the disruption brought about by the flood. Many said they just didn't feel like themselves anymore, with all that had changed.

While I would recommend this book to anyone, I do think we should have been told a bit more about what eventually happened to Buffalo Creek and its people. Perhaps the book was published before this was fully possible. If so, Erikson might see fit to revisit the town and its survivors again.

On Feb. 26, 1972, a mining company dam broke, sending 132 million gallons of water rushing down Buffalo Creek in Logan County, West Virginia. Death and property destruction were great, but even worse was the devastation of the community spirit and the long-lasting mental trauma suffered by the inhabitants. Erikson explores what he sees as a major dichotomy in the ethos of the "mountain people" involved in this disaster: a sense of independence versus a need for dependence. Erikson believes this seems to breed inaction and a total feeling of loss for these people in disasters such as this. There are, of course, other factors at work here, but it's an interesting theory. Comparisons to other similar disasters (hurricane victims in Florida, for example) would make for a worthwhile study.

One of the better books I've read detailing the issues involved in natural disasters and their aftermath. Erikson describes in detail what the survivors went through and how they dealt with the destruction of their community.

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