Aberfan disaster
The Aberfan disaster was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on 21 October 1966. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, and overlaid a natural spring. Heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to suddenly slide downhill as a slurry, killing 116 children and 28 adults as it engulfed Pantglas Junior School and a row of houses. The tip was the responsibility of the National Coal Board, and the subsequent inquiry placed the blame for the disaster on the organisation and nine named employees.
There were seven spoil tips on the hills above Aberfan; Tip 7—the one that slipped onto the village—was started in 1958 and, at the time of the disaster, was high. In contravention of the NCB's procedures, the tip was partly based on ground from which springs emerged. After three weeks of heavy rain the tip was saturated and approximately of spoil slipped down the side of the hill and onto the Pantglas area of the village. The main building hit was the local junior school, where lessons had just begun; 5 teachers and 109 children were killed.
An official inquiry was chaired by Lord Justice Edmund Davies. The report placed the blame squarely on the NCB. The organisation's chairman, Lord Robens, was criticised for making misleading statements and for not providing clarity as to the NCB's knowledge of the presence of water springs on the hillside. Neither the NCB nor any of its employees were prosecuted and the organisation was not fined.
The Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund was established on the day of the disaster. It received nearly 88,000 contributions, totalling £1.75 million. The remaining tips were removed only after a lengthy fight by Aberfan residents against resistance from the NCB and the government on the grounds of cost. The site's clearance was paid for by a government grant and a forced contribution of £150,000 taken from the memorial fund. In 1997 the British government paid back the £150,000 to the ADMF, and in 2007 the Welsh Government donated £1.5 million to the fund and £500,000 to the Aberfan Education Charity as recompense for the money wrongly taken. Many of the village's residents developed medical problems as a result of the disaster, and half the survivors have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder at some time in their lives.
Background
is situated toward the bottom of the western valley slope of the Taff Valley, on the eastern slope of Mynydd Merthyr, approximately south of Merthyr Tydfil. When the Merthyr Vale Colliery was sunk on 23 August 1869 by John Nixon and partners, Aberfan consisted of two cottages and an inn frequented by local farmers and bargemen. By 1966 its population had grown to approximately 5,000, most of whom were employed in the coal industry. Since the nationalisation of the British coal industry in 1947, Aberfan's colliery had been under the control of the National Coal Board. Regulation in the coal industry was provided by HM Inspectorate of Mines. The inspectors had worked as engineers in the coal industry and were former employees of the NCB. The River Taff runs north-to-south through the village; at the upper side of the settlement, on the western outskirts, the bed of the disused Glamorganshire Canal and a disused railway embankment run parallel to the river.The first spoil from the coal mine was deposited on the valley's lower slopes, east of the canal, but during the 1910s the first tip was started on the western slopes, above the canal line and the village. By 1966 there were seven spoil heaps, comprising approximately of waste. Tips 4 and 5 were conical mounds at the apex of the slope, although Tip 4 was misshapen from an earlier slip; the remaining five were lower down; all were directly above the village. Tip 7 was the only one being used in 1966. About high, it contained of spoil, which included of tailings—waste from the chemical extraction of coal, fine particles of coal and ash which took on properties similar to quicksand when wet.
File:Aberfan Colliery spoil tramway - geograph.org.uk - 73636.jpg|thumb|upright|The Aberfan Colliery spoil tramway in 1964, with spoil heaps at top left. The pennant sandstone building at mid-left is Pantglas County Secondary School, which lies adjacent to the junior school.
Tip stability is affected by water conditions. Tips 4, 5 and 7 had been sited on streams or springs. The presence of the springs was common knowledge in the area, and they had been marked on the Ordnance Survey and Geological Society maps since 1874. Tip 4 at Aberfan, which had been used between 1933 and 1945, was large, and had been started on boggy ground between two streams. At the time of its planning, the Merthyr Tydfil borough engineer thought that despite the position, it would be unlikely to avalanche. Following some ground movements in the tip in the early 1940s, a drainage channel was dug in early 1944. In November that year part of the tip slid down the mountain to stop approximately above the village. In May 1963 Tip 7 shifted slightly; in November that year there was a more substantial slide. The NCB stated that the movement had not been a "slide", but was instead a "tailings run"—a run-off of tailings from the surface of the tip—which left its stability unaffected. After the slide, the NCB stopped tipping tailings on number 7, but normal spoil continued to be deposited.
Aberfan is in an area of relatively high rainfall, an average of a year. In 1960 it was, the heaviest of recent years in the run-up to the disaster. Between 1952 and 1965, there was severe flooding in the Pantglas area of Aberfan on at least 11 occasions. Residents complained that the flood water was black and left a greasy residue when it receded. Complaints had been made by residents to Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, who corresponded with the NCB between July 1963 and March 1964 on the topic of the "Danger from Coal Slurry being tipped at the rear of the Pantglas Schools". In early 1965 meetings were held between the council and the NCB at which the Board agreed to take action on the clogged pipes and drainage ditches that were the cause of the flooding. No action had been taken by October 1966 when the tip collapsed.
Tip collapse
During the first three weeks of October 1966 there were of rainfall, nearly half of which was in the third week. During the night of 20–21 October the peak of Tip 7 subsided by and the rails on which the spoil was transported to the top of the tip fell into the resulting hole. The spoil movement was discovered at 7:30am by the first members of the morning shift manning the heaps. One of the workers walked to the colliery to report the slip; he returned with the supervisor for the tips, and it was decided that no further work would be done that day, but that a new tipping position would be decided on the following week.At 9:15am a significant amount of water-saturated debris broke away from tip 7 and flowed downhill at in waves high. G. M. J. Williams, a consultant engineer who gave evidence at the subsequent tribunal, stated that the 9:15 am movement:
Approximately of spoil slid down the mountain, destroying two farm cottages and killing the occupants. Around travelled across the canal and railway embankment and into the village. The flow destroyed two water mains buried in the embankment and the additional water further saturated the spoil. Those who heard the avalanche said the sound reminded them of a low-flying jet or thunder.
The avalanche struck Pantglas Junior School on Moy Road, demolishing and engulfing much of the structure and filling classrooms with thick mud, sludge and rubble; 109 children, from 240 attendees, and five teachers were killed in the school. The pupils of Pantglas Junior School had arrived only minutes earlier for the last day before the half-term holiday, which was due to start at 12 midday. The teachers had just begun to record the children's attendance in the registers when the landslide hit. The adjacent secondary school was also damaged, and 18 houses on surrounding roads were destroyed. Mud and water from the slide flooded other houses in the vicinity, forcing many to evacuate their homes. Once the slide material had come to a halt, it re-solidified. A huge mound of slurry up to high blocked the area. The acting headmaster of the secondary school recalled:
Some staff died trying to protect the children. Nansi Williams, the school meals clerk, used her body to shield five children, who all survived; Williams did not, and was found by rescuers still holding a pound note she had been collecting as lunch money. Dai Beynon, the deputy headmaster, tried to use a blackboard to shield himself and five children from the slurry pouring through the school. He and all 34 pupils in his class were killed. When the avalanche stopped, so did the noise; one resident recalled that "in that silence you couldn't hear a bird or a child".
Rescue efforts and retrieval of the bodies
After the landslide stopped, local residents rushed to the school and began digging through the rubble, moving material by hand or with garden tools. At 9:25 am Merthyr Tydfil police received a phone call from a local resident who said "I have been asked to inform that there has been a landslide at Pantglas. The tip has come down on the school"; the fire brigade, based in Merthyr Tydfil, received a call at about the same time. Calls were then made to local hospitals, the ambulance service and the local Civil Defence Corps. The first miners from the Aberfan colliery arrived within 20 minutes of the disaster, having been raised from the coal seams where they had been working. They directed the early digging, knowing that unplanned excavation could lead to collapse of the spoil and the remnants of the buildings; they worked in organised groups under the control of their pit managers.The first casualties from the wreckage of the school arrived at St Tydfil's Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil at 9:50 am; the remaining rescued casualties all arrived before 11:00 am: 22 children, one of whom was dead on arrival, and 5 adults. A further 9 casualties were sent to the East Glamorgan General Hospital. No survivors were found after 11:00 am. Of the 144 people who died in the disaster, 116 were children, mostly between the ages of 7 and 10; 109 of the children died inside Pantglas Junior School. Five of the adults who died were teachers at the school. An additional 6 adults and 29 children were injured.
The 10:30 am BBC news summary led with the story of the disaster. The result was that thousands of volunteers travelled to Aberfan to help, although their efforts often hampered the work of the experienced miners or trained rescue teams.
With the two broken water mains still pumping water into the spoil in Aberfan, the slip continued to move through the village, and it was not until 11:30 am that the water authorities managed to turn off the supply. It was estimated that the mains added between of water to the spoil slurry. With movement in the upper slopes still a danger, at 12:00 noon NCB engineers began digging a drainage channel, with the aim of stabilising the tip. It took two hours to reroute the water to a safer place, from where it was diverted into an existing water course.
An NCB board meeting that morning, headed by the organisation's chairman, Lord Robens, was informed of the disaster. It was decided that the NCB's Director-General of Production and its Chief Safety Engineer should inspect the situation, and they left for the village immediately. In his autobiography, Robens stated that the decision for him not to go was because "the appearance of a layman at too early a stage inevitably distracts senior and essential people from the tasks upon which they should be exclusively concentrating". Instead of visiting the scene, that evening Robens went to the ceremony to invest him as the chancellor of the University of Surrey. NCB officers covered for him when contacted by Cledwyn Hughes, the Secretary of State for Wales, falsely claiming that Robens was personally directing relief work.
Hughes visited the scene at 4:00 pm for an hour. He telephoned Harold Wilson, the Prime Minister, and confirmed Wilson's own thought that he should also visit. Wilson told Hughes to "take whatever action he thought necessary, irrespective of any considerations of 'normal procedures', expenditure or statutory limitations". Wilson arrived at Aberfan at 9:40 pm, where he heard reports from the police and civil defence forces, and visited the rescue workers. Before he left, at midnight, he and Hughes agreed that a high-level independent inquiry needed to be held. That evening the mayor of Merthyr Tydfil launched an appeal for financial donations—soon formally named the Aberfan Disaster Fund—to alleviate financial hardship and to help rebuild the area.
A makeshift mortuary was set up in the village's Bethania Chapel on 21 October and operated until 4 November, from the disaster site; members of the Glamorgan Constabulary force assisted with the identification and registration of the victims. Two doctors examined the bodies and issued death certificates; the cause of death was typically asphyxia, fractured skull or multiple crush injuries. Cramped conditions in the chapel meant that parents could only be admitted one at a time to identify the bodies of their children. The building also acted as a missing persons bureau and its vestry was used by Red Cross volunteers and St John Ambulance stretcher-bearers. Four hundred embalmers volunteered to assist with the cleaning and dressing of the corpses; a contingent that flew over from Northern Ireland removed the seats of their plane to transport child-sized coffins. The smaller Aberfan Calvinistic Chapel nearby was used as a second mortuary from 22 to 29 October.
By the morning of Saturday 22 October, 111 bodies had been recovered, of which 51 had been identified. At daybreak Queen Elizabeth II's brother-in-law Lord Snowdon visited and spoke with workers and parents; at 11:00 am Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, visited the scene and talked to rescue workers. In the early afternoon light rain began falling, which became increasingly heavy; it caused further movement in the tip, which threatened the rescue work and raised the possibility that the area would have to be evacuated.
Robens arrived in Aberfan on Saturday evening. After visiting the colliery and the disaster site, he gave a press conference at which he stated that the NCB would work with any public inquiry. In an interview with The Observer, Robens said the organisation "will not seek to hide behind any legal loophole or make any legal quibble about responsibility". Robens returned to the village the following morning to see the situation in daylight. He was interviewed by a television news team while examining the tip. When asked about the responsibility of the NCB for the slide, he answered:
On 23 October assistance was provided by the Territorial Army. This was followed by the arrival of naval ratings from and members of the King's Own Royal Border Regiment. That day Wilson announced the appointment of Lord Justice Edmund Davies as the chairman of the inquiry into the disaster; Davies had been born and schooled in the nearby village of Mountain Ash. A coroner's inquest was opened on 24 October to give the causes of death for 30 of the children located. One man who had lost his wife and two sons called out when he heard their names mentioned: "No, sir—buried alive by the National Coal Board"; one woman shouted that the NCB had "killed our children". The first funerals, for five of the children, took place the following day. A mass funeral for 81 children and one woman took place at Bryntaf Cemetery in Aberfan on 27 October. They were buried in a pair of trenches; 10,000 people attended.
Because of the vast quantity and consistency of the spoil, it was a week before all the bodies were recovered; the last victim was found on 28 October. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Aberfan on 29 October to pay their respects to those who had died. Their visit coincided with the end of the main rescue phase; only one contracting firm remained in the village to continue the last stages of the clear-up.