Teton Dam Claims: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Administrative Law and Governmental Relations of the Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Ninety-fourth Congress, Sesond Session, on H.R. 14328, H.R. 14367, and S. 3542 ... June 30, 1976U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976 - 96 pages |
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administration agencies amended American Insurance Association amount anger associated Buffalo Creek disaster Buffalo Creek flood Buffalo Creek survivors Bureau of Reclamation caused Chairman claimant claims coal company collapse Committee compensation Congress damages dead Death guilt described designee disaster area disaster relief dreams eastern Idaho effects emotions experience fear Federal Government feel flood FLOWERS FRANK CHURCH Gerald Stern Hiroshima House human individual insurance company Interior interview irrigation JAFFE June 11 legislation Leo Ryan Lifton lives loss ment mental suffering million nature neurosis personal injury plaintiffs projects proposal psychiatric PSYCHIC NUMBING psychological regulations relationship require responsibility result Senate settlement SHATTUCK statement STEVE SYMMS subcommittee subrogation symptoms Teton Dam disaster Teton Dam failure Teton River third party TIDWELL tion tornado warnings traumatic U.S. Geological Survey United valley victims WALTER FLOWERS wife
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Page 58 - The acceptance by the claimant of any such award, compromise, or settlement shall be final and conclusive on the claimant, and shall constitute a complete release of any claim against the United States and against the employee of the government whose act or omission gave rise to the claim, by reason of the same subject matter.
Page 86 - Despair expresses the feeling that the time is now short, too short for the attempt to start another life and to try out alternate roads to integrity.
Page 69 - I mean a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality. The collective trauma works its way slowly and even insidiously into the awareness of those who suffer from it, so it does not have the quality of suddenness normally associated with "trauma.
Page 86 - Numbing, then, is an aspect of persistent grief; of the "half-life" defined by loss, guilt, and close at times to an almost literal identification with the dead. As one of the plaintiffs put it: "I feel dead now. I have no energy. I sit down and I feel numb." Survivors withdrew from groups, from activities of various kinds, from one another. They describe being disinterested in seeing friends or in many cases in doing anything. Even in intimate relationships their capacity for both emotional and...
Page 86 - People who have gone through this kind of experience are never quite able to forgive themselves for having survived. Another side of them, however, experiences relief and gratitude that it was they who had the good fortune to survive in contrast to the fate of those who died — a universal and all-too-human survivor reaction that in turn intensifies their guilt. Since the emotion is so painful, the sense of guilt may be suppressed and covered over by other emotions or patterns, such as rage or apathy....
Page 70 - This failure of personal morale is accompanied by a deep suspicion that moral standards are beginning to collapse all over the hollow; and in some ways, at least, it would appear that they are. As so frequently happens in human life, the forms of misbehavior people find cropping up in their midst are exactly those about which they are most sensitive. The use of alcohol, always problematic in mountain society, has evidently increased, and there are rumors spreading throughout the trailer camps that...
Page 86 - It's hard to believe that all this happened" or "I still can't accept that it happened." Numbing and denial are sustained because of the survivor's inability to confront or work through the disaster experience. He is thus left psychologically imprisoned in death- and guilt-related conflicts that can neither be dealt with nor eliminated. Feeling stays muted; psychological pain remains silent; and life experience in general is drastically reduced.
Page 58 - Our organization has worked with the American Mutual Insurance Alliance and the National Association of Independent Insurers...
Page 83 - I have a real scary feeling when it rains — even though there's no danger up there." And still another, greatly troubled by insomnia and general anxiety: "If it rains I get a very uneasy feeling. The clouding up now makes me feel uncomfortable." A related symptom, also widespread, is a fear of crowds. Gatherings of large numbers of people become associated with the disaster. One man (in May 1974) told us that he avoids crowds because he imagines another disaster and "if there are 12 people in the...
Page 86 - ... destroyed. It's like you're left alone." That is, his sense of having been abandoned and his tendency to withdraw reinforce one another. Very common aspects of numbing at Buffalo Creek have been such things as memory lapses, general sluggishness and unresponsiveness, and confusion about details of one's immediate surroundings and about the passage of time in general. Those lapses, as one survivor makes clear, tend to be specifically associated with the disaster: "I can remember things from 1932...