Aberfan

I'm sure most of us can remember this. I was only small but I remember my mum weeping over it. It's coming up to the 50th anniversary of this awful disaster that took the lives of 116 children.

The Aberfan disaster was a catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, on 21 October 1966, which killed 116 children and 28 adults. It was caused by a build-up of water in the accumulated rock and shale, which suddenly started to slide downhill in the form of slurry.[1]

Over 40,000 cubic metres of debris covered the village in minutes. The classrooms at Pantglas Junior School were immediately inundated; young children and teachers died from impact or suffocation. Many noted the poignancy of the situation: if the disaster had struck a few minutes earlier, the children would not have been in their classrooms, and if it had struck a few hours later, the school would have broken up for half-term.

Great rescue efforts were made, but the large numbers who crowded into the village tended to hamper the work of the trained rescue teams, and delayed the arrival of mine rescue workers from the Merthyr Vale Colliery. Only a few lives could be saved in any case.

The official inquiry blamed the National Coal Board for extreme negligence, and its Chairman, Lord Robens, for making misleading statements. Parliament soon passed new legislation about public safety in relation to mines and quarries.




http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3833303/The-mothers-bound-grief-50-years-Aberfan-haunting-stories-survivors-mothers-116-children-engulfed-coal-tip-solace-meeting-week-half-century.html

The pupils of Pantglas Junior School had arrived only minutes earlier for the last day before the half-term holiday. The teachers had just begun to record the children's attendance in the registers when a great noise was heard outside. They were in their classrooms when the landslide hit: the classrooms were on the side of the building nearest the landslide.

Nobody in the village was able to see it, but everyone could hear the roar of the approaching landslide. Some at the school thought it was a jet about to crash and one teacher ordered his class to hide under their desks. Gaynor Minett, then an eight-year-old at the school, later recalled:

It was a tremendous rumbling sound and all the school went dead. You could hear a pin drop. Everyone just froze in their seats. I just managed to get up and I reached the end of my desk when the sound got louder and nearer, until I could see the black out of the window. I can't remember any more but I woke up to find that a horrible nightmare had just begun in front of my eyes.[5]

After the landslide there was total silence. George Williams, who was trapped in the wreckage, remembered:

In that silence you couldn't hear a bird or a child.

I was actually out in Singapore, but even there it reverberated.  It was on the TV and I remember us all sitting and crying at the pictures.   My Mum's friend was Welsh and was from near there, she was frantic to get hold of family, which wasn't so easy then.

sassy wrote:I was actually out in Singapore, but even there it reverberated.  It was on the TV and I remember us all sitting and crying at the pictures.   My Mum's friend was Welsh and was from near there, she was frantic to get hold of family, which wasn't so easy then.

The Coal Board was totally to blame. Why on earth they thought it was ok to heap slag up on a known spring is beyond me. People complained about it numerous times.

They were.  All those terrible deaths because of such a stupid thing being done must be very hard to come to terms with.

I remember this too. My mum was crying and said all those children are about your age, how terrible for their mums.

She, like many cried for the poor children too who died on that sad day.

my mum said that was the day she stopped believing in god

I stopped believing in God after 1 month in Nam !

nicko wrote:I stopped believing in God after 1 month in Nam !

And what exactly has God got to do with The Coal Board piling slag over a spring, and ignoring the warnings?

This was a horrific tragedy, I remember it well.

HoratioTarr wrote:

nicko wrote:I stopped believing in God after 1 month in Nam !

And what exactly has God got to do with The Coal Board piling slag over a spring, and ignoring the warnings?

bastard labour party

I'm just watching a documentary about it on ITV

I remember that day and it was heartbreaking to watch as the news reports were being brodcast on TV. I was in the Orkney Islands at the time and the place was stunned as it was across the nation.

I was brought up in a small coal mining village a bit like Aberfan with a pit bing overlooking it and our primary school but fortunately it never happened there.

Sad sad times.

The Devil, You Know wrote:

HoratioTarr wrote:

And what exactly has God got to do with The Coal Board piling slag over a spring, and ignoring the warnings?

bastard labour party

WHAT does it have to do with the Labour Party...
Why do you hate workers so much, Dean --  did your sister once date one ?

When the responsibility over such incidents as this disaster generally stops with both the mine's management and owners, and the mining regulatory body at the time..

I'll bet the mine management pretty well got away with virtual murder ???
Fucking toffee-nosed Tory lickspits, no doubt..