Aberfan

[CadiFfan]

Please, just for one minute this morning, close your eyes and think of those who lost their lives and their families

❤️

I still find it shocking all these years later. Absolutely devastating.

Absolute devastation , and to think the residents had to fight to get the other tips removed.

i live in an area with slate waste tips. And i shudder in storms and heavy rain that they will move.

It is unimaginable yet it happened. Hope all those involved found some kind of peace x

❤

I remember it, went to a rural primary school in a nearby Herefordshire. On the Monday morning there was a special assembly with a lot of nonsense about all the children were now with god. One of the teacher's wept through it - she had a niece that had died there.

I was not born, but the name still brings a chill.

All I can do is look in the news or locally to support any community calling out about what is happening to them to try to get a fix before a disaster.

Best wishes to anyone that was directly affected.

I remember it too and was also in Herefordshire. I remember my mother crying and she asked me to choose a toy so that she could send it to the surviving siblings.

This was an official charitable campaign - not just something my mother unilaterally decided to do! Seems completely bizarre now.

My father wrote a poem about it, which was published. It was a very sad time and I still think about it quite often.

I remember watching the news and being horrified. I still have the image of the residents digging with their bare hands . The attitude of the NCB and the government was disgusting especially expecting the charity fund to pay towards the tip removal !

It’s all the more shocking because it wasn’t an unforeseeable natural disaster, but a manmade one.
Miners with knowledge of the land and the springs underneath it had repeatedly warned the National Coal Board of the dangerous siting of the waste tip.

Absolutely unbelievable horror. Watching the tv coverage of it at the time is one of the events etched on my memory.
My heart goes out to the families, survivors, and all those living there whose lives were devastated that day.

The trauma suffered by those who were in the school and their loved ones is just beyond comprehension.

Just tragic.

I remember watching a documentary on it and the surviving children were not allowed to ever mention it again. There is a BBC article on just that on the Wales news today.

Very close to me. My mother was on supply at Pant Glas the year before & didn’t get the permanent position when it was advertised. The sucessful teacher was killed.

I was a child when it happened but I still felt the horror of all those deaths. I've wondered how was it for the DC who lived when nearly all their friends were gone. Living by the other slagheaps must have been awful

I wasn't born, but one day in my mid 20s, it was mentioned in the intercession prayers at church, commemorating an anniversary, and I read up on it then. It's important to remember, and to tell your children (who are old enough) what happened. The episodes of "the crown" series on Netfix that cover this were good to watch though obviously devastating.

Is there a documentary anywhere about this? I don’t know much about it other than how it was portrayed in The Crown.

I’ve been to the Memorial Garden a few times, I live close by. Incredibly moving place. Hard to imagine chaos and panic in such a quiet place today.

i remember them ever year, and think of this often, despite not being born until a few years later. I did my Geology degree in S Wales in the 1990s. One of my lecturers had been one of the first people from the NCB on site. He weeped as he told us. As a geologist, I now work on the peripheries of natural hazard management, but Aberfan was preventable, it was a completely man made disaster, and I mean man made. None of those NCB managers reacted to signs of early warning.

I’ve saw the BBC documentary this week. It’s still so chilling.

@MoreCheeseEverywhere there was one in the last couple of days, you should be able to find it on catch up tv

My sister and I were very young children then, but I remember my mother taking us to a neighbor's house to watch the news when it happened (we didn't have a TV). All the neighborhood mothers were there, and it did make a terrible impression on my mother, as I expect it did on all parents.

So, the awful news did also reach all the way across the Pond to the US. Many years later, when I moved to Wales, my mother still remembered "That's where Aberfan is."

Thank you for the thread, OP. I shall be remembering this morning.

ed. typo

There’s has been a documentary on BBC3 (I think 3) Monday/Tuesday this week. I imagine it’s on IPlayer. I think it’s just called “Aberfan”.

I was 4 at the time. It's one of my earliest memories.

💔

I find it astonishing that the NCB claimed that no-one knew there were springs under the tips. Given the rainfall there, it's pretty obvious that any hill has several springs running down.

The disaster was covered in one of my OU modules which I felt very challenging at times. I had to take a break a few times to keep going with the material. Absolutely devastating for these families. I will be remembering today ❤️❤️❤️