Aberfan. 54 years ago today.

[MaidenMotherCrone]

116 children died. 144 people in total.
Just heartbreaking.

I'd never really heard about it until I listened to an item on Radio 4 and later heard John Humphries talking about it. It is absolutely, gut wrenchingly tragic. Those poor, poor families losing a generation in a blink of an eye. Heartbreaking

The horror of it is just too much to even quite comprehend. It makes me feel sick to think about.

😢

It never gets any less awful does it?

I am glad they use it in GCSE so the community is remembered.

so very sad

It was used in my GCSE for something 25 years ago. My English teacher - whose first language was welsh - told us of the students from her teacher training college going to help dig. And the faces they came back with.

I know they’re two different tragedies, but I can’t help but cry every year on the anniversary of Aberfan and again on the anniversary of Dunblane. Some things are too tragic to not feel.

I remember watching the news with my mum and sisters
They blew a whistle to ask the rescuers to stop digging so they could listen out for noises from anyone still alive.
I remember sitting in that silence straining our ears hoping to hear something. Just a terrible silence.
Thoughts to all those families x

I can still remember the horror of watching it on tv. a total tragedy.

My dad was in the RAF outside Bath at the time, and he went to help with as many of the station as could fit in the vehicles available. After he died, mum told me he'd come back, crept upstairs and given us all a kiss (we were still quite little). Then he'd gone back down and drunk himself unconscious.

I remember my mother - who was born and reared in the next valley - sitting and weeping over the evening news on TV. I'd have been primary school age.

This is horrific. I have got to 36 years old and I'd never, ever heard of this. Thank you for sharing. What a terrible terrible thing to happen, those poor people.

I remember when we got home from school that day Mum hugged us both so tightly.

Everyone SHOULD know about Aberfan. Everyone.

I'm 60 and I remember hearing about this on the tv or the radio - tv (B&W) I think. I remember thinking it sounded awful.

It was the school my mum went to as a child, her parents had a fish shop in the village. She took me to pay our respects when I was a young adult. The horror of the graves on the hillside is unspeakable.

My mum was at school there years before the disaster, but the old photos of her in the playground are very poignant.

Well thanks to your post @MaidenMotherCrone, I do now. Awful.

I've deleted and rewritten this post about ten times.
I just don't know what to say as nothing seems enough.
Thoughts and prayers to the whole community now and then

It happened a while before I was born but it was told to me from about 5 or 6 whenever we'd drive towards Merthyr; I love about 20 minutes down the road. Every time I drive the road over it now I awful.

I'm mid 40's and I had no idea of this disaster till I watched the Crown last year. Very sad both what happened and that I'd never heard of it till recently .

I was born the same week as the disaster. I often wonder what lives those children who would only have been a few years older than me would have had.

The class and privilege aspect of this actually makes me quite angry. That publicly donated memorial funds were released to clear the other pits of an extremely wealthy enterprise. That the government pushed for that to happen. That nothing was ever done, and no one punished or even so much as censured for it.

The theft of the memorial funds is breathtaking.

I watched a documentary about the survivors a few years ago and they said they never ever talked about the tragedy growing up. It must have been too raw and painful for all the families.

Absolutely horrific.

My mother crying as this was reported on the news is one of my earliest memories.

For those who are not familiar with the disaster, the BBC produced at the time of the 50th anniversary: www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47. It covers the context in terms of the history of mining in the area, the disaster, and the aftermath. And it is utterly haunting, I still remember it even though it was four years since it was first put online. I am always struck by the horror of the miners being called out of the mine by the crisis whistle (when usually it would be families called to accidents in the mines), and the horror of survivors guilt for the children who survived.