WEST VIRGINIA: Disaster in the Hollow

Three days of rain mixed with a runoff of snow had dramatically raised the level of the lake dammed up behind the huge coal-slag heap at the head of Buffalo Creek. It was still raining hard at 5:30 a.m. when Logan County Deputy Sheriff Otto Mutters was awakened by a phone call from another deputy warning him that the slag heap was in danger of giving way. As Mutters remembers, "My gut went tight."

Deep in West Virginia's soft-coal region, where tough miners and their families have lived for decades along the narrow mountain valleys known as hollows, Buffalo Creek Hollow (see map) echoes the contours of the twisting, snakelike stream from which it takes its name. It is one of the most densely settled areas of Logan County, with a dozen coal mines and more than 10% of the population. Not much wider than a football field at some points, the hollow forms a natural funnel from the dam to the Guyandot River 17 miles away. Often, a heavy rainfall is enough to flood the valley's 16 mining towns, many of which border right on Buffalo Creek.

Holding Fast. After the other deputy's call, Mutters drove to the slag heap and checked with a mining official, who assured him that the dam was holding fast. Unconvinced, Mutters set out in his car to spread the alarm. But there was too little time, and the people of Buffalo Creek had been threatened too often before with false alarms about the dam. Some time after 8 a.m., the wall of slag burst open "like a bomb had hit it," according to one witness, and a huge mountain of water and sludge descended on the hollow, trapping many people still asleep.

Estimated to have been between 20 ft. and 30 ft. high, the 175 million gallons of raging water released from the dam simply demolished the valley. In the dozen miles closest to the dam, its enormous force stripped the soil down to bedrock in places, lifted buildings, cars and trees and hurled them downstream. A frame church was seen riding the flood's crest like a flagship, before being battered to splinters. In one community the only building left standing was the company store. Several bodies were later found floating in the Guyandot some 20 miles downstream.

Because of its mucky consistency, the flood tide took about an hour to course through the valley, leaving behind a thick mantle of silt and slime that hampered rescue operations for days afterward. Viewed from the air, reported TIME Correspondent Art White, the hollow "looked like a black corrugated moonscape." All told, 1,500 houses were destroyed or damaged and 4,000 people left homeless. More important, 92 are known dead, and almost as many are still missing; over 1,100 were injured.