FILE PHOTOS
National Guard officers helped locate the dead along Buffalo Creek,
then worked to dig graves in the frozen ground. Here, two family members
are laid to rest in the same grave shortly after the Feb. 26, 1972, disaster.
Nelson Sorah saw Buffalo Creek through the eyes of both
a reporter and a National Guard officer.
A Charleston Gazette reporter at the time of the flood, he was part of
the first reporting team that made its way into the hollow following the
disaster. No sooner had he finished filing the first eyewitness accounts
of the disaster than he was called to active duty. He spent the next eight
days on a body recovery detail.
Now a public relations consultant and community activist, Sorah shared
his observations about the 25-year-old tragedy during an interview with
Gazette reporter Rick Steelhammer.
"It was the weirdest thing, honestly. I wasn't supposed to work that
day. It was Saturday and someone was sick and I was working overtime. It
had been raining for several days, and we had minor flooding around Charleston.
We got a call somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 or 2 o'clock. They said
a small dam - a cofferdam was what they were calling it - had broke at
Buffalo Creek. Nobody knew where Buffalo Creek was, but we finally found
out it was in Logan County."
(A cofferdam is a watertight temporary structure in a lake, river, etc.,
for keeping the water from an enclosed area that has been pumped dry so
that a bridge foundation, dam or pier may be constructed.)
"Then, as the day progressed we were getting reports of flooding all
across Southern West Virginia, and got word that 18 people had died at
Buffalo Creek. That's a lot of people. Eight's a lot, but 18 ... all because
a cofferdam had broken? We decided to go down there.
"But we couldn't get there. The conventional way was to go down U.S.
119 to Stollings and turn left at Man, but you couldn't get in that way.
I knew the back way in, since I'm from the coalfields in that part of the
state, so we went down through Pineville.
"We left here about 7 o'clock - me, reporter George Steele and photographer
Larry Pierce. After we got down in Wyoming County, just before we got to
the Logan County border, we passed this church and there was a whole bunch
of people there along with a State Police cruiser. A great big deuce-and-a-half
Army truck was coming off the hill and turning onto the road just as we
got there. It was carrying the first survivors coming off Buffalo Creek.
"They were the very first people out of there, some 12 hours after
it happened. So we screeched to a halt. I knew the trooper and I started
talking to him and he said it was really bad, you were going to find a
whole bunch of people dead. I wasn't prepared to understand what he meant
by a whole bunch. But we zipped in there and started talking to people
and interviewing them. They told us it was absolutely horrible ... that
they had to run up the mountainside to get away from the water. We were
thinking cofferdam. We just weren't prepared for what they were trying
to explain.
"People will still ask 'How was it?' and one way to try to describe
it is to think of a tornado and the total destruction it leaves. You had
exactly the same thing on Buffalo Creek.
"We went on down to Man and the Appalachian Regional Hospital and
found that the National Guard had set up headquarters at the junior high
school and we went over there. Of course, I was in the National Guard at
the time and I knew all the people in it who were there, and they were
telling us that the destruction was absolutely mind-boggling.
"We spent the night in the makeshift morgue in the junior high gym.
More bodies, more survivors were coming in all night. We didn't sleep.
People were quietly going about their business, stacking bodies on tables
and cleaning the mud and coal dirt off them. Otherwise, the silence was
so deep you could hear a flea sneeze. One family had a birthday that day,
and they'd been shopping and were preparing for a party and this flood
hits them, and that night, they're being lined up in a morgue. It makes
you say, 'My God, there but for the grace of God go I. ' "
"We still weren't prepared for what we would see the next day.
"We got out the next morning and started out from the mouth of the
hollow. It was cordoned off. State Police were there and you couldn't go
up there. So we just went back, parked the car, got all of our gear and
took off walking up the railroad track. We were the first reporters at
Buffalo Creek.
"The lower end of Buffalo Creek wasn't all that bad for the first
mile ... then I guess about two miles into it, the destruction and amount
of debris picked up. Then the roadway was washed out. We came upon a railroad
trestle that had been lifted up and moved downstream, and the railroad
rails themselves were bent around trees in an incredible show of destruction.
Everybody was sort of drifting around with a dazed sort of look.
"Officials had no way of planning for what happened. The Guard units
in that part of the state were armored cavalry, not transportation people,
so they were kind of unprepared for the kind of work they'd be doing after
that kind of destruction. It was a slow process that didn't really get
going until we left there and let the world know about it.
"So we're finally up there, walking up the creek, taking pictures,
talking to people and marveling at the destruction. I guess about four
or five miles into the hollow we came to Amherstdale and saw the first
really big pile of debris and all the splinte red houses and shops and
cars and structures of all kinds that had broken apart into boards and
were all stacked together in a manner that was very much like toothpicks
against this railroad trestle. It was enormous. Scores of houses and everything
you c an imagine being in a community was in there and stacked right against
this railroad trestle.
"We stopped and stood there for the longest time and tried to imagine
what had happened. We were kind of lost in our thoughts and didn't speak
to each other much. We just looked at it and tried to imagine how many
houses does it take to make that kind of pile. It was two, two-and-a-half
stories tall, and it was 40 or 50 yards deep. But it was pressed together
so tight you literally could not pull a board out of it. It was something
that should have signaled to us 'You've got something on your hands that
's never happened before.'
"I don't know if we really understood that, then. We knew it was unusual
and we knew that something awful had happened but I'm not sure we had accepted
that we were watching something that had never happened before in West
Virginia. So we just continued up the hollow.
"Everybody was trying their hardest to find people. We walked the
longest way up the hollow with this preacher we came upon who obviously
was looking for his flock and looking for people he knew. But in this chaotic
situation, he just couldn't find anybody. He had that numb, dazed look
- that thousand-yard stare that everybody talks about - that says 'My God!
What's happened here? I have to find somebody.'
"He walked up the hollow and past his church and he would point to
a house that used to be across the river and say 'Mr. Jones and his family
used to live here.' The new position of the house caused him to wonder
what's taken place, wonder where these people are. Here he is, having lived
there, at a total loss to explain where these people were and what happened
to them.
"It was just a crazy kind of situation. It's disorienting, like constantly
spinning around and continually trying to keep your balance. Nothing made
sense. We knew we had to come back and write some type of comprehensive
story that would let somebody comprehend the total destruction, but all
this time, your mind's just spinning. How can I really transfer what I'm
seeing to everybody else? That was constantly on my mind.
"We walked all the way up to No. 1 Lundale, then No. 2, and had yet
to see a body. We had talked to several people who had escaped the water
and almost everybody I talked to described it as a 20-foot wall of water.
"Lundale was about halfway up the hollow, and by this point it was
almost total destruction. The hollows are so steep there's only room for
a road, a railroad track, a street and a row of houses. At Lundale it widened
out a little and there were a couple, three rows of houses, or used to
be. At this point everything was uprooted - trees, houses, garages, cars
- everything in its path had been turned around, turned over or demolished.
It was there we saw our first body.
"We were walking up there, about 8 o'clock in the morning and it wasn't
really cold. The people in the morgue told us we weren't going to believe
what we'd be seeing and they were right. How can you describe what's indescribable?
We looked over at this tree - a small tree, probably 4 inches in diameter
- and a body was up in it with his arm across his face like he was trying
to shield it. It was a man, a boy actually, 18 or 19. I saw a big gash
on the side of his head, but other than that he looked OK, as far as dead
people look OK. He was up in a limb, maybe 18, 20 feet off the ground.
"We went probably another hundred yards and saw our second body -
an older man lying in the creek, or where the creek had been, and there
was a dog with him, lying beside the body. The dog was very much alive,
and kept within 2 or 3 feet of him. I'm sure the dog was protecting the
person. I assume it was the guy's dog. Those were the only two bodies we
saw that day ....
"We went on up the hollow, and after Lundale, there was nothing. There
was no electricity, no infrastructure left at all. But it was all familiar
to me. Having grown up in a coal camp myself, I knew those people. I knew
how they lived. I knew what kind of houses they lived in, I knew what their
lives were like. I knew the frame houses, all the same color, and the sameness
of everything. I knew the company store and the preacher. I knew the guy
who had the new truck. I knew all these people. I didn't know them by name
but I knew them in some form, and I knew what I was looking at.
"The best way to describe the total destruction above Lundale is when
you take a garden hose and spray it forcefully against the ground, it takes
everything out ... the rocks and the pebbles all wash away. All you're
left with is a bed of gravel. That's what it was above Lundale. All the
houses had been wiped out. All the topsoil had been taken away with it.
There were no structures, just little piles of debris here and there.
"We walked all the way up to where the dam was. We knew by then that
it could not have been just a cofferdam. When we got there, it was massive,
a huge, towering thing that had the whole left side out of it where it
had broken through. Strangely enough, to the right of that dam was a house.
Absolutely untouched. You could look from the dam across the hollow and
see where the water had hit the other side of the mountain. The water came
out of there and went WHUMP! And then it careened from side to side all
the way down. It was absolute devastation, just like taking a dozer and
scraping the land clear for 5 miles or so.
"We walked all the way back to Man, because there were no communications
up the hollow, and called the newsroom first thing, and said 'It's unbelievable.
We're going to have tens, dozens of bodies out here.' I think the count
went up to 60-something that day. We couldn't file our stories because
everybody was saying 'Stay off the phones, they're needed for emergency
workers.' So we drove back to Charleston and we got here and wrote our
stories and developed our film and gave the wire services all their information
... and the whole world lit up - The New York Times, Der Speigel - you
name it and they were sending someone to West Virginia. Soon, help started
pouring in.
"I finally got home Sunday night somewhere in the neighborhood of
10 or 11 o'clock, after not sleeping at all Saturday in the morgue, then
walking up and down the entire hollow. I was pretty tired and dirty. I
got cleaned up and went to bed and was in bed two hours when the phone
rang. I'd been activated by the Guard.
"I spent the next eight days recovering bodies.
"I was just becoming an officer at the time. I was in charge of the
farthest section up the hollow. We didn't have any structures standing,
so there was no looting to worry about. Everything was scoured out down
to rock and gravel, except the roadway, which was pretty much intact -
even the asphalt.
"The entire state National Guard was in there, plus
the Army Corps of Engineers, and coal companies ... Once the word was out,
a lot of help arrived. Every morning, we'd get up at 5, then get in a truck
and drive from Monaville where we were staying to Logan, and since you
couldn't drive up the hollow, we took a back road from Stollings across
a strip m ine that came out right behind the tipple at Amherstdale. There,
we hit Buffalo Creek, and drove all the way up the hollow.
"In the midst of all this destruction, houses piled up against each
other, we came to this garage that was still standing but tilting at an
angle. I'll never forget it. There was a ''65 Impala - a big Chevrolet
- in there that didn't have a scratch on it. Not a mark. Not even any water
damage. We drove a small Bobcat dozer up, cleared out a path, started it
up, and drove her out. It was amazing.
"Nobody was ever found who was trapped or injured. You were either
dead or unscathed and that was it. There was no middle ground.
"Every day we'd walk the creek, people on both sides, and work our
way up, looking in brush and whatever, then we'd come back to this big
debris pile and start going through it, looking for bodies.
"We had an operator who was a really skillful guy. He had this big
D-9 bulldozer and would take the blade and only use about 2 feet of it
at the corner to scrape through the debris, while our guys would stand
on top of it, below it and walk in front of it and walk behind it looking
for bodies.
"We came up with an artificial leg, which got our attention. I remember
just before lunch on our third or fourth day we were going through this
debris for the last time that afternoon, and I was the last guy there while
this operator was going through the debris. We found several baby dolls,
and I'd take a tent pole and poke them to make sure they were just rubber.
But when the dozer went through I saw this little hand sticking down, and
I jumped down from the top of the debris below me and took the pole and
as soon as I touched it I knew.
"It was a body. I screamed at the dozer driver to stop and of course
that got the attention of all the guys in the crew. It was a little blond-haired
girl about somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 years old. Just pretty, and
pink for some reason, I don't know why. My son was about the same age at
that time. As difficult as that was for me, I had a couple of guys start
screaming, just lost it, which drove me crazy. So we stopped everything
else and started taking the debris off this little girl and put her in
a body bag, put her in the back of the truck and took off for the morgue.
"The next day we came back to check through the debris again - I think
it was supposed to be our last day there - we started walking the creek
bank just like our normal operation and found the body of a woman. I mean
honest to God, it was right out in the open, right beside the creek. I
don't know why we didn't see her before. She was partially covered in sand,
laying on her face, looking upstream, not a mark on her body. So we put
her in a body bag and took her down.
"We finished up the debris pile that day and the next morning we were
burying people in a cemetery up the hollow. The ground was so cold and
frozen we had a difficult time digging into it. Also, they needed some
assistance getting equipment up to the cemetery site and getting caskets
up there.
"The second day we went up there, there was typical funerals going
on, you know, everyone was upset and they were having the final viewing.
And it was the woman and the little girl we'd recovered. In the same coffin.
It turned out to be a mother and her child. They'd lived in the first community
below the dam and just got caught in the water.
"God, that was awful. Really hard to take. But I don't know. Maybe
it helped bring a sense of closure to it. We'd found them, brought them
in, and now we'd buried them.
"Buffalo Creek didn't really have a lingering effect on me like I
thought it might. It was five or six years before I went back, and then
it was like I'd never been there before. It had changed totally. The road
was not where it was. The railroad had been rebuilt, but it was so alien
to me it had no effect.
"We eventually recovered 118 bodies, I think, and seven were never
found. I can see why. I remember this one church that was sitting on the
railroad tracks. We drove by it day after day, both ways. It looked like
it hadn't been hurt at all - just picked up and set there. About the fifth
day, there's an ambulance parked there with its light on, and I thought,
'Oh my goodness, we've got somebody hurt.' They had a wrecker truck holding
the corner of this church up, and there was a body under it. It had been
under that church the whole time.
"As far as the journalism part of the experience goes, it was a horrible,
bleak, dirty thing, but it was also something that had never happened in
West Virginia before. A small part of you says you're glad you got to do
it.
"It was a challenge, trying to tell people how widespread the destruction
was, when you were operating in a vacuum. Photos helped, but they just
gave you a little piece of the puzzle. If you put it all together, it was
numbing, just mind-boggling. You can't know, let alone explain, the effect
the flood had on all the people who lived there and were forever changed
by what happened. It was an incredible experience."