Dam Failure Case Study: Buffalo Creek Dam (West Virginia, 1972)

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On February 26, 1972 at approximately 8:00 A.M., Coal Slurry Impoundment #3 at the Buffalo Creek coal mine in Logan County, West Virginia gave way sending millions of gallons of water and millions of cubic yards of coal slurry down the Buffalo Creek. Over the next three hours it would devastate the communities of Saunders, Pardee, Lorado, Craneco, Lundale, Stove, and 11 others. The wave washed away or demolished over 500 homes, left over 4,000 homeless and took the lives of 125 people. The impoundment was used as a settling pond for mining operation and was the third impoundment in that valley. Impoundments #1 and #2 were downstream of Impoundment #3 and subsequently failed as well. All three impoundments had been built with almost no engineering involvement. The only plans for Impoundment #3 was a sketch that had been drawn by the onsite vice president, Mr. Steve Dasovich. Inspections had been performed intermittently by the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources. They regularly found deficiencies that were left unaddressed and stated in a letter in April 1971 that all inspections covering a period from September 19, 1966 to March 25, 1971 had been unsatisfactory. One of the concerns was the lack of ability to handle large amounts of surface runoff, and the Department called for an emergency spillway to be installed. The mine did install a largely inadequate 24-inch pipe that they called the emergency spillway. It appears that there was little to no engineering involved in the design or installation of this spillway pipe.