The pain that follows a disaster can be as elusive as the pain of illness. Kai Erikson argues that catastrophic events such as the Buffalo Creek flood in Virginia cause a syndrome that includes pain such as numbness, reliving of the event, family loss, loss of community, and many others. The problem that arises from such a catastrophe is how to manage the pain suffered by its victims. Veena Das and Elaine Scarry argue that pain is not shareable but also requires attention. Through an in-depth look at Kai Erikson's article on the events that took place at Buffalo Creek and the mainstream literature on pain, it becomes clear that the recognition and generalizability of victims' pain and suffering is impossible to validate and, due to this, disaster relief efforts are significantly compromised. Buffalo Creek is a coal mining town in the Appalachians of Virginia. The city revolves around coal mining. Generations and generations have benefited from the large amount of coal provided by the mountains. However, along with the plethora of coal came a huge amount of coal byproducts, one of which was coal slurry. For years, coal companies had dumped huge quantities of toxin-filled coal sludge down mountainsides into nearby waterways and mountainsides. At Buffalo Creek, the Buffalo Mining Company “used more than half a million gallons of water a day to clean the four thousand tons of coal it loaded onto the railroads (Erikson, 25).” The company used the mountain landscape and bulldozer-compacted debris to create an artificial levee, or "dam," as the city's residents called it. This man-made structure retained a whopping 132 million liters of toxic coal sludge. Creating… middle of paper… it is no wonder that the silt and mud originally used to construct the impoundment itself is still present throughout the city years after the disaster. Everything remained contaminated. Another damaging blow to the community was the illusion of being safe. Before the flood, the people of Buffalo Creek felt safe in their neighborhoods and homes, but that feeling of safety had been swept away in their cities. All that remains is the feeling of impending doom, many people reported in the interview conducted by Erikson that they fear everything. One man even reported that if there is even a storm warning it will keep him up all night worrying about its impending destruction. Along with individual and collective trauma, pain also emerges in the legal formality and coldness shown to the Buffalo Creek survivors. disaster.