The tortured hills of West Virginia
Charleston Gazette
Robert J. Byers: The tortured hills of West Virginia
I once reported from the site of a mine blowout in Raleigh County. It had been a snowy, rainy spring, and the mountain high above Rock Creek — its insides honeycombed with a waterlogged section of abandoned mine — simply burst, sending a cascade of water, mud and rock raining down on the families below.
Their cars sat immobile, ringed by a 5-foot-deep sea of mud, studded with pieces of coal. The rear windows of their homes — the ones facing the mountain — were cracked and broken, and a tree trunk had found its way inside a back room.
My eyes followed the outstretched arm of a homeowner as he pointed up to the face of the mountain, where a gash continued to bleed a stream of muddy water. The symbolism of the mountain — broken and weeping — was hard to miss.
The coal company spokesman gave me the usual act-of-God line — “I mean, volcanoes erupt” — and life in the coalfields marched on.
Never mind that a week before, an abandoned mine in Cabin Creek had burst and flooded two homes.
A few years later, another blowout would send acid-laden water into lower Davis Creek, killing off the newly recovered fish population there.
It’s now 22 years from the day that I stood along the banks of Rock Creek, and we again have had a wet spring. The people of Hughes Creek in eastern Kanawha County had to evacuate their homes in March for fear that the mountain lining their hollow will be the latest to break open, showering them with its damaged insides.
How little it seems that we’ve learned in that time about our mountains, about how to co-exist with them.
West Virginia has a love/hate relationship with its mountains.
When we’re away for a while, we often talk fondly about getting back to the mountains, to their warm embrace.
But, like an abusive lover, we always expect our hills to be there for us — no matter how badly we treat them.
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http://www.wvgazette.com/article/20150429/GZ04/150429165/1453
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