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

by Kai T. Erikson

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The 1977 Sorokin Award-winning story of Buffalo Creek in the aftermath of a devastating flood. On February 26, 1972, 132-million gallons of debris-filled muddy water burst through a makeshift mining-company dam and roared through Buffalo Creek, a narrow mountain hollow in West Virginia. Following the flood, survivors from a previously tightly knit community were crowded into trailer homes with no concern for former neighborhoods. The result was a collective trauma that lasted longer than the show more individual traumas caused by the original disaster. Making extensive use of the words of the people themselves, Erikson details the conflicting tensions of mountain life in general--the tensions between individualism and dependency, self-assertion and resignation, self-centeredness and group orientation--and examines the loss of connection, disorientation, declining morality, rise in crime, rise in out-migration, etc., that resulted from the sudden loss of neighborhood. show less

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1 review
Based on Erikson's involvement in a lawsuit. The goal was to show that the survivors of the Buffalo Creek disaster had lost the defining connective elements of their original community as a result of 1) shock related to how awful the experience of the flood was, and 2) how poorly the post-disaster recovery was handled. The book seems freshly interesting post-Katrina, but is also flawed in certain ways (most particularly for me, the fact that Erikson's sample was so clearly biased). An interesting albeit somewhat dated study; worth reading.
½

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Common Knowledge

Original publication date
1976
Important places
Logan County, West Virginia, USA
Important events
Buffalo Creek Flood (1972)
First words
This report deals with the human wreckage left in the wake of a terrible flood that tore through a narrow mountain hollow called Buffalo Creek in the winter of 1972. [Introduction]
Logan County, West Virginia, lies on the wester flank of the Appalachians. [Part One]
Last words
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)What happened on Buffalo Creek, then, can serve as a reminder that the preservation (or restoration) of communal forms of life must become a lasting concern, not only for those charged with healing the wounds of acute disaster but for those charged with planning a truly human future.
Original language
English

Classifications

Genres
Sociology, Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, History, Science & Nature
DDC/MDS
363Society, Government, and CultureSocial problems and social servicesPublic Safety - Police, Crime Investigation
LCC
HV610Social sciencesSocial pathology. Social and public welfare. CriminologySocial pathology. Social and public welfare.Emergency managementRelief in case of disastersSpecial types of disasters
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Statistics

Members
208
Popularity
156,445
Reviews
1
Rating
½ (3.55)
Languages
English
Media
Paper, Ebook
ISBNs
3
ASINs
2