Aberfan silence today

[Phil Bullock]

Just to highlight there is a minutes silence at 9.15 this morning

 

http://www.caerphillyobserver.co.uk/news/962035/merthyr-tydfil-and-rhymney-mp-gerald-jones-calls-for-uk-wide-minutes-silence-for-aberfan/

 

I remember being stunned by the disaster at the time - and scenes of the devastation are still emotional today

 

Phil

[beast66606]

I remember coming home from school to find my mum very upset and it got worse as the news broke.

 

Bows head and remembers the 144.

 

I'll be observing the silence this morning.

[Tim Chambers]

Just to highlight there is a minutes silence at 9.15 this morning

 

http://www.caerphillyobserver.co.uk/news/962035/merthyr-tydfil-and-rhymney-mp-gerald-jones-calls-for-uk-wide-minutes-silence-for-aberfan/

 

I remember being stunned by the disaster at the time - and scenes of the devastation are still emotional today

 

Phil

Agreed Phil. Mrs. C and I visited the site of the tragedy some years ago and yes, a very emotional experience. We actually met one of the survivors at the school who had appeared on television shortly before and who became mayor of Merthyr Tydfil if memory serves me right. What we found equally moving was the number of parents who had joined their children in the cemetary.

[jamie92208]

I was 13 at the time and remember hearing about it on the radio that evening when I got home from school. The pictures in the paper next morning had a huge impact though I did get into trouble fro trying to read the paper in an English Lesson that Saturday morning. Until the two documentaries that I've watched in the past week I had no idea as to just how culpable the coal industry was.

 

Jamie

[jonny777]

Yes, I was also 13 at the time but we must have been an 'upmarket' family because I saw the tv coverage on the 6 o'clock news that evening after school.

 

I remember having difficulty comprehending what had happened, because in fenland Lincolnshire the idea of coal spoil tips was not something I had come across a great deal, neither was the fact they could bodily move after heavy rain. In fact as my countryside was pan flat for miles in every direction, I was somewhat unfamiliar with the idea of mountains. 

 

My thoughts and prayers are with the friends and relatives of all those involved and with those who survived.

[Clive Mortimore]

I was nine at the time at either said or thought " They will not have their half term holiday." That almost guilty child like thought remained with me until last year when I visited Aberfan. 

 

 

Also please remember today those brave people who went to rescue the children that morning.

[RhBBob]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47

 

I had just arrived in Brum from where a lot of people travelled to help.  Arrived home that night to my 'digs' to find the family sitting in silence staring at the TV.  Just awful.

[chrisf]

The piece by John Humphrys on the Today programme this morning I found very moving. I am not at all sure whether any more of those who reported on the disaster at the time are still with us.

 

Chris

[John_Hughes]

I was at an Embassy reception in Kuwait when a BBC crew told me about the disaster. I'm afraid that my very public eruption about the British Government and its minions in the NCB saw me henceforth excluded from all Embassy functions, presumably in case I said something rude about them again.

 

But with the passing of the years my fury has only grown: the vile Harold Wilson's theft of the money given by so many to help the people of Aberfan, but which was instead handed to the NCB; the fact that no-one responsible spent time in jail although a manslaughter charge or two would surely have stuck; and the lamentable press coverage of the time which seemed to make the people of South Wales in general the perpetrators of what happened rather than the victims - all these even now drive me to almost uncontrollable fury.

 

Still, I mustn't forget that finally the money donated was repaid to the people of Aberfan, only some forty years too late - and still without a penny of interest being paid. B*ast*rds!

[The Stationmaster]

I was working in Slough at the time and during the day there was a steady increase in the number of people wishing to find out what train services were to South Wales as the area at that time had a large Welsh contingent who had moved up during the depression for work on the trading estate. Many very sad and grieving people about and heading for 'home' and their family members still living there.  There was also considerable confusion and fears about other tips moving and everyone trying to find more information - a truly sad day.

[kevinlms]

I do remember this, its the first disaster I can recall on TV - if I remember correctly, we had not long got a TV. It happened just a few days after my 10th birthday.

[Fat Controller]

I remember this as if it were yesterday; I had only just started at grammar school in Llanelli. Teachers came back from morning break, looking very sombre, and explained as best they could, what had happened. I think there was an emergency assembly at lunch time. A school-friend's father was with the St John, and took a group of volunteers to Aberfan that afternoon; they returned several days later, looking completely broken.

What made things perhaps more immediate to us was that the majority of victims were only a little younger than us; also, quite a few of us had lived with pit-heaps in close proximity our entire lives. My old primary school (Furnace CP), for example, was next to the tip for the old Cille colliery- it was built in the same style as the one at Aberfan, which made the images in the press all the more poignant. My sister's school, Pentip, was actually built on top of an old heap; it was to close some years later, when the bell-tower collapsed due to subsidence. Fortunately, this was about ten minutes after the last child had passed beneath, or there could have been another slaughter of the innocents.

I read the piece on the BBC News site in the small hours of this morning at work; fortunately, the lights were dimmed, so no-one could see that it had reduced me to tears.

[Andy Kirkham]

I was in my last year of primary school at the the time.

I remember thinking how insensitive it seemed to interview surviving children on TV about the deaths of their schoolmates.

 

How common were slips of colliery tips like this? Did they occur elsewhere but go unremarked if there were no casualties?

[Fat Controller]

I was in my last year of primary school at the the time.

I remember thinking how insensitive it seemed to interview surviving children on TV about the deaths of their schoolmates.

 

How common were slips of colliery tips like this? Did they occur elsewhere but go unremarked if there were no casualties?

Colliery pit-heaps did slide, but would have been unremarked upon unless property or people were involved. There was a big one in Yorkshire fairly recently, which severed the line to Immingham- Hatfield Colliery?. That tip was on a fairly level site, but had become saturated. The Aberfan tip, like so many in South Wales, was on a hillside, as there was nowhere else to put it; the valley floor, and lower sides, were filled with pit, village, road and rail. There were occasions where the waste was taken elsewhere by rail to be tipped (Nelson Bog in South Wales and Glew's Hollow near Goole spring to mind), but these have been fairly rare. We think of these tips as 'waste', but they often contain a lot of fine coal that wouldn't have been marketable in the past; these has led to the self-financing removal of many heaps, as such coal can be burnt in power stations and cement works.

[Zomboid]

Being some way short of 50, I have no recollection of this (in fact until reading the BBC article this morning I wasn't really aware that it had happened). Have to say that article did require me to take a quick stroll around the office. A terrible tragedy, but I was also shocked to read of some of the aftermath, the reaction of the NCB and the misuse of the fund that had been raised for the families.

[Derekstuart]

If anyone hasn't read the now de-classified documents, I would urge you to do so. It is absolutely incredible. That political and commercial hubris resulted in them doing nothing beforehand, despite being reasonably aware of the danger is bad enough.

 

But the way the NCB and government acted afterwards is beyond comprehension- forcing bereaved parents to prove they were close to their children before they got a "payout" (or buy off). Siphoning money out of the hardship fund to pay NCB and government costs?~

My whole opinion of this Country and the ruling class changed forever when I read this report. Possibly one of the most disgraceful examples of conduct from the power elite (gov and business) of any peace time incident.

[Legend]

I hadn't realised that the tip was placed on a hillside . I thought that the hillside was made by the tip if you see what I mean . So I understand better now why it slipped . It does seem strange that given it had happened that the remaining tip wasn't removed and insultingly they had to use disaster relief money to do it themselves . You can't see that happening nowadays. We often think things were better in the past and criticise what we believe can be an over the top approach to health and safety now , but I think we are better off living in current times . Thoughts are with families who even though it's 50 years ago must be affected today.

[jamie92208]

I hadn't realised till I watched the BBC2 documentary that the chairman of the Enquiry was Edmund Davies. Until then his main claim to fame was being the presiding judge at the trial of the Great Train Robbers. However the programme showed home to be a very thoughtful and incisive man who was willing to stand up for the families. I owe him a personal debt as he later chaired the inquiry into Police pay and conditions that led to a decent living wage for police officers in the late 70's. I didn't know about the taking of the money from the fund but seem to remember that the difficulties caused by the way the fund was set up and administered, were referred to after the Bradford Stadium fire, some lessons had been learned.

 

Jamie

[Northroader]

I was in the BR Cardiff Divisional office at the time, the news came in and it was clear that the slip had been across the old line to Merthyr on the west side of the valley, which had been closed and lifted sometime previous, so we wouldn't be needed then. There was an awful awareness of tragedy all day, and then getting home at night and seeing the television reports, and the full horror of how a primary school full of kids had been overwhelmed. I used to go up the valley to Merthyr quite regularly before it happened, and that tip really dominated the valley as you went up, a huge black cone sticking right out from the hillside. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, it should never have just kept being added to, growing and growing.

[Arthur]

 

Interesting documentary on the other night including a partial reconstruction of the inquest. A tip had slipped in South Wales some years earlier, pre WW2, when the mines were in private ownership. Nobody killed but it actually diverted the course of the River Taff. It resulted in the Powell report which made recommendations about the siting and management of tips. It was widely distributed.

 

Not long before Aberfan a smaller, non fatal, slip had occurred and the NCB had asked local pit engineers to assess the state of other tips. Seems that there was some animosity between the site engineer in charge of the colliery and the local civil engineer who covered the Aberfan tip. The former submitted a vague report without recourse to the civil engineer who submitted nothing at all.

 

The local tip workers were well aware of the springs beneath the tip, knew the dangers they presented yet local management seemed either unaware or indifferent.

 

Lord Robens, NCB chairman, was highly criticised. At the time of the slip he had said that the NCB were unaware of springs under the tip and that they could not have foreseen the tragedy. It was only at the end of the inquiry, when he was almost forced to attend, that he admitted that, yes, they did know. The inquiry chairman was scathing as the entire inquest could have been pretty much over in a day had the NCB said, 'yes, springs and water under the tip caused the slip and we knew that they were there'.

 

The way that the NCB, authorities and government treated the people of Aberfan and abused the funds raised to help them beggars belief.

 

.

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[Dave47549]

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[BoD]

There is a letter in this morning's paper from an employee of George Wimpey at the time.

 

He was in a meeting at their head offices, led by one of the firm's senior directors.  This director was a tough builder of the old school, he was regarded as no-nonsense and somewhat intimidating.  During the meeting his secretary put a phone call through to him, something unusual in itself.  He listened and his emotional response was "Send them all we've got".

 

The call had been from the Wales office, who had been asked if they could help with the rescue operation at Aberfan. 

 

There were probably lots of offers of help that morning but that disaster moved even the 'hardest' of people from all over the country to 'send them all we've got".

[Pacific231G]

I remember the day all too well. As I was on the bus from school I saw it all over the local paper and I rushed home to tell my Mum who had spent part of her childhood in a pit village. At the time I was well aware of pit disasters but the real horror seemed to me to be the idea of a mining disaster that, instead of those working underground, killed their children who should have been safe at school.At the time the antics of the NCB around the hardship fund seemed more like chaos than conspiracy but a lot has come out since and at the time I had no idea that part of the hardship fund (that I contributed my pocket money to) was plundered to pay for the removal of the rest of the tip. It was simply inconceivable that the tip wasn't immediately removed at the expense of the NCB or government.

 

It wasn't until three years ago that I finally visited Aberfan and though I was deeply moved by the memorial garden, the cemetery and the now peaceful site of the tip (where the spring still flows though harmlessly now), far more moving was someone I met while walking along the  old railway line on my way back from the cemetery who turned out to have been a lifetime resident of the village. Fortunately for him he attended a different primary school and didn't live in the most affected part of the village but he told me, in a very down to earth way, about the atmosphere of the place in the years that followed.

 

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity"

 

 

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity"

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity"

[t8hants]

We had just returned from seeing the family at Resolven, vale of Neath about 25 crow miles away.

Although we didn't get over into the Taff very often, all the South Welsh mining villages were much like another and strongly linked.

My Grandmother had been a teacher in a very similar little school.

It was one of the few times I remember my Mother crying

[peanuts]

read this very profound piece on the bbc http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-150d11df-c541-44a9-9332-560a19828c47 very much a lump in the throat read