Topic: on this day 1966... Aberfan

[quincyg]

spotted this on a link from my news email. My late mum used to talk about it a lot. It was only 2 months before I was born and my mum sat crying in front of the TV. She felt awful sitting there waiting with a new life and watching distraught parents on the TV as they dug with bare hands looking for their kids. 116 of them perished as did 28 adults.
I've seen a couple of documentaries on this and the tragedy of it is awful. What made it worse is that it was preventable.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/21/newsid_2705000/2705335.stm

[Rushian]

My dad was put on standby to go and help with the rescue effort. Over 2000 miners and others were digging at one time by hand to try and resue those buried. 144 were found dead including 116 children. It wiped out a whole generation.

The real scandal after the disaster was the removal of a load of money from the public appeal, set up to help the families, to clear the contribute towards removing the remaining slag heap that overlooked the village.

I remember it took years for them to clear those potential death traps from all the valleys - I can still clearly remember the tips in my valley now.

Far more on the disaster here:

http://www.nuff.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/home.htm

[Terry de Niro]

I'm old enough to remember this awful tragedy, what a sad loss of life of so many kids and their teachers..There but for the grace of God go I...RIP...

[Mavis Cruet]

It was the month before I was born but my mother recalls how she dashed up to my sisters school to pick them up. She knew they were ok, but she just wanted to hold them and thank her lucky stars.

Just an awful thing to have happened.

[The 5th Benitle]

RIP. What a horrible disaster

[Maggie May]

I remember Aberfan.  Words just can't describe the sheer, devastating  horror of it and how it affected the whole nation.    I'm thinking things I can't write down. 

[Roger]

This is a disaster that is too much of a loss to describe. I cant see how any of those families can come to terms with it. I hope its some comfort to know that alot of people who are not connected to this aweful tragedy still think about the lost ones including me.

[Jon G]

My first teacher in comp, lost his wife and two children in the disaster, as he was from the village and his wife was a teacher in the school. My Dad helped out with the digging after he had gone to my Grans to make sure she was ok and her house was safe.

[Welshred]

I remember it took years for them to clear those potential death traps from all the valleys - I can still clearly remember the tips in my valley now.

Still have tips in Rhymney Valley, I live in Llanbradach and they put a drainage system on the tip to prevent what happened at Aberfan, although I'm positive that the tip here is nowhere near the size of the Aberfan tip.

[Mystic Red]

I can't sum up exactly how I feel about this, words still fail me.

I was approaching my 13th birthday at the time.

A tragic & devastating day that should never have happened.

The horrors of that day will stay with me & all that witnessed it forever. R.I.P.

Roger. My thoughts are mainly in what in you wrote. It is good to see they have not been forgotten.

[Maggie May]

Welshred.   I had no idea there were still tips.  I don't care now big they are or what drainage systems have been put in them, I couldn't be paid enough to live anywhere near one, and its awful that people still have to.

[Millsee]

Terrible terrible disaster.

One of the "good" things to come out of it was a whole new look at the geotechnics behind the storage of colliery waste. Only yesterday I read a report regarding "post-Aberfan technologies".

I think that if it hadn't happened there, it would have happened elsewhere. In an ironic way, the disaster probably helped save thousands more lives.