DINGESS

    The flooded area stretched about four miles along Twelvepole Creek in Dingess. We must have looked lost when we turned onto the creek road, because a raggedy lime green pickup pulled alongside. William Payne offered to be our guide. He showed us his steel-blue, barn-style home tipped at the edge of the creek, toppled cement blocks marking its original site. On the afternoon of June 17, several rain storms seemed to collide above the community, and raindrops as big as quarters fell as if someone was dumping a giant bucket overhead. “The creek rose three or four inches a minute,” Payne recalled. “My neighbor up the creek said 'It’s coming, you should get out of there.'.” He got his wife to safety--and four minutes later his house was gone.

William Payne's home had sat near the bare patch at the left side of the left photo. The flood shoved it more than 200 feet into the creek (right photo above). The nearby church was also flooded (right).

Pen Coal has mined along the northern ridge above East Fork, but Payne, who had worked on a strip mine, didn’t think mining contributed. Our exploration pointed to several factors that could have worsened the flooding. Forest fires had swept through the hills the previous summer, reaching almost to Payne’s dog pen about 15 feet above the road. Nothing more than shrubs protected the hills. About a mile east of Payne’s house, Bob and I found a new dirt road through the creek and up the mountain to the south right where Caney Fork joined the East Fork of Twelvepole Creek. A week after the flood, Caney Fork was still full of mud, while East Fork was nearly clear. Caney Fork drains the north side of the small surface mine coming over the mountain from Dingess.

 Finally, we noted several hollows blown out with mounds of rock and light dirt, so sandy it looked like a beach. Bob thought it looked like mine sand. Pen Coal and an older mine had filled about two miles beyond some of those hollows.

    Two days earlier, the scatter-brained storm had dropped enough rain near Matewan—ironically during the annual Hatfield-McCoy Festival—to break out an old deep mine. We didn’t have time this trip for a first-hand look. But the newspapers told the story of a slip half the size of a football field, evacuation of 20 families, water three-feet deep in one home and rampant fear in the community. Another deep mine broke out in a Fayette County on July 1, serving to heighten fear of the billions of gallons of water held in old mines throughout the coal fields—just as John Wilson of Anawalt had warned in July 2001.