Word: buffalo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
...amount of rescue work, however, could still the acrimonious debate that erupted over who was responsible for the disaster. Slag dams -or gob piles, as they are often called in the region-are an ugly but common sight in West Virginia. Like the one at Buffalo Creek, which was owned by the Buffalo Mining Co., a subsidiary of the Manhattan-based Pittston Co., they are built up from the residue that results from washing coal. The slime and silt settle, and the water that backs up behind the slag heap is often used again for washing the coal. Such dams...
...which matters little to the grieving and homeless miners of Buffalo Creek Hollow, many of whose kin and neighbors now lie beneath the markers that dot the rolling hills of West Virginia. The people of Buffalo Creek say that they have known for years that the slag pile was dangerous. And yet, in the face of a peril so imminent, they continued to live in the threatened valley because it was the only life they knew...
During shooting, says Coppola, "there was a full flush of intuition that Brando fused with his technique. If a herd of buffalo ran across the set, he'd react in character." For Brando's death scene, the script called for him to cavort with his grandson in a garden, then topple over from a stroke. Brando suggested adding a little game that he played with his own children: he cut a set of jagged fangs from an orange rind and inserted them in his mouth. The result not only drew a spontaneous on-screen reaction from the child...
...cameras and secret, secret ink, he still couldn't keep up with the times. Forced into retirement in 1968, he sat in his study on Lake Starnberg with a death mask of Frederick the Great looking down and wrote his memoirs (due out later this year) rather like Buffalo Bill after the frontier went thataway. For spying, like everything else, has gone automated...