To remind people of the minute silence

[Famalam13]

Posting here due to traffic.

Today is 50 years since the Aberfan disaster in which 116 children and 28 adults died. A minute silence will be held at 9:15am.

Thers was program on BBC last week check iplayer yes the coal board charged families as they wanted them all removed so coulnt happen again and coal board said cost to much money.

They used funds raised after and many many years later think 1990s it was paid back by Welsh Goverment was disgrace.

Thank you for posting that letter, I also read the BBC link.

There's a documentary on BBC I player at the moment
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07zk62d/surviving-aberfan

This is also an Informative one:

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07zk6fj/aberfan-the-fight-for-justice

Disgrace that BBC coulnt shit up for 1min did about 20 sec then talked over it saying minute silence for aver-fan. It's on the screen let's respect silence argh

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I have just read the links, sobbing. It is not long ago; we should not forget.

That letter made me cry, I did the minutes silence.

I grew up in North Wales and I used to shudder when we drove past a massive Slag heap after my parents told me about the Aberfan disaster. I thought about the children a lot growing up. The letter brought home to me the fact that many adults also lost their lives.

I just checked to see when the minute's silence was to be held, and realised I was reading this thread at the time. So at least this thread made me think of the victims. It was an appalling and wholly unnecessary tragedy, which I remember well.

Next time we grumble about health and safety regs, just stop and think. This is the sort of tragedy they are designed to avoid.

This was also very revealing and moving - especially from one woman (who later on ran the post office with her husband)

www.itv.com/hub/the-aberfan-young-wives-club/2a4601

I agree with you Akire ,, same with that Lorraine show . No silence, just waffling on (I turned it off completely , observed the minute)

So sad that so many people have no idea about what happened, such tragedy yet i never heard about it growing up here(Essex), I found out through mn, a little while ago.

Every school in the UK should remember them so nobody forgets.

I grew up in North Wales in the early 2000s. We were told about Aberfan every year on the 21st, and studied it quite extensively one year in primary school, so it's still being taught in Welsh schools, at least.

Such an awful tragedy :(

Absolutely it wasn't meant to insulting at all. It was meant to be a comment on age and how we grow up with things in our consciousness. I remember finding out about it at about age 12 or 13 so 1976 - only 10 years on - and read the Laurie Lee piece which is a really moving account of a year on.

I was very young when it happened but I remember it being in the news regularly for years after it happened due to the incomprehensible behaviour of the coal board.

Just too heartbreaking, was feeling really emotional this am before my kids went to school, cant imagine them just not coming back alive.

Thoughts are with all the survivors and all the families devastated by losing children and other family members that day.

R.I.P.

Say what you like about the Wright Stuff. They did a very respectful minute's silence.

I get surprised when people haven't heard of big events - more to do with time moving on without you realising, and things beginning to fade to history. Events lose their cultural significance as generations move on, where they were once commonly known and spoken of. It's more a sense of your own smallness in time, I suppose, and slight shock at how things so horrific can drift from the forefront of public knowledge, than it is to do with not realising how a particular individual may not have heard of it.

We studied it at school in the 80s/90s. It was all very sad, but distant to me then. Now I have had children it seems more immediate to me reading about it again. It feels like the world should stop when such a thing happens, those poor, poor families. Unimaginable pain.

The BBC link Ineedmore shared is so informative. Very hard to read - especially the police inspector cwtching the poor children and tucking them in every night, in the chapel they used for identifying the bodies - but very well-written and researched.

Its 10 miles away from where I live. The village has an air of sadness even to this day and the cemetery is heartbreaking to see. It was an awful tragedy that was avoidable and the National Coal Board acted disgustingly in the aftermath - money raised after the event for the locals was taken by the government to use to remove the remaining tips. Everyone should know about it - it was a national scandal.

I cry every time I drive past. In floods this morning and gave my kids extra kisses before dropping them off at ysgol. The head is doing a special Aberfan assembly today.

The Wright Stuff on Channel 5 just did a minute silence showing photos of what had happened

Thanks OP, I grew up the next valley over from Aberfan so I am all too aware of what happened that day, and how completely preventable it was

Now I have junior school age children of my own, it is even harder to comprehend what happened on my own doorstep. It's utterly heartbreaking. There is still so much anger at how the community was treated, and that no organisation or person ever faced any consequences for allowing this to happen. After the disaster the remaining unsafe tips were left there over the village, and only removed when money from the victims' fund was used to do so. I still find that so hard to comprehend.

I'm from a mining family, so Aberfan was something I just always knew about. I could see the slag heap of our local pit from my bedroom window when I was little, and it always scared me that something like that could happen with no warning.

The headteacher of my senior school was from Aberfan, and he used to do an assembly about it every year on the anniversary. It was incredibly moving to hear him talk about being involved in the search for the children.

I looked to see if there was a list of the names of the children and I found one here. It's absolutely devastating to see how families lost multiple members. I can't even begin to imagine the pain.

Yes I hugged mine extra hard this morning too. I've always been aware of Aberfan as we're from the Rhondda.

This morning, the radio played an interview with a mother from the day that it happened. One child came home, the other didn't. The interview was taking place right at the time and the interviewer asked her 'so you haven't heard from the other one since?' and she just said 'no' but the tone of her voice...it was pleading, searching.

Desperately, desperately sad.

DH comes from near Aberfan and remembers the disaster like it was yesterday. We had our minutes silence at home today. BBC's lack of respect was disgusting

I'm Australian and knew about Aberfan. Reading that letter, just... no words