Filmmaker and WVHC board member Bob Gates has just released his 1972 film montage of the Buffalo Creek Disaster on DVD. He decided to release the film in its original silent form as an historic document, but with the addition of annotations to tell the story of how the disaster occurred. With aerials and shots on the ground just after the flood, the impacts of the dam failures are clear. The recent Martin County sludge flood and last year’s Tennessee coal ash spill helped inspire the film release.

On February 26, 1972, the gob pile dams at Pittston’s Buffalo Mining failed at Three Forks above Lorado on Buffalo Creek. A tidal wave of sludge and water swept down Buffalo Creek obliterating a 17 mile valley, killing 125 people, and leaving thousands homeless. The following day Citizens to Abolish Strip Mining flew over Buffalo Creek and Mr. Gates filmed the valley on a gray, windy day. The next day Mr. Gates and others filmed the Amherstdale area. After State Police spotted him with his 16mm Bolex camera in the back of a pickup truck they were blocked from proceeding into the upper valley (Governor Arch Moore had imposed a news blackout, stating “the only thing worse than the disaster was the black eye West Virginia got in the press”). A month later the Citizen’s Commission was allowed to go up the valley to the dam site.

Mr. Gates edited this film into a 22 minute silent film montage. Recently the History Channel transferred the 16mm film to video for use in one of their programs. In honor of the 35th anniversary of the Buffalo Creek Disaster, Gates annotated the original unchanged silent montage to tell the story. Today there are many communities in peril from sludge and coal waste impoundments. Recent disasters have wiped out entire watersheds.