Coal! The black diamond of the British Isles. A carbon-rich fossil fuel on which the British had
built their industry. For a long time, coal mining has been one of the most important
businesses in the country. It put bread on the tables of thousands of families from Scotland
and North England to Midlands and Wales. No different was the situation in the small town
of Aberfan in South Wales. Everything these people had, they owed it to coal. However,
it would also be the cause of the town losing what they cherished the most.
Early on October 21, 1966, 140,000 cubic yards of coal waste from the nearby mine slid from the hill
above the Aberfan and buried all the buildings on its path. The accident lasted for not more than a
few minutes, but the result was catastrophic. Apart from several residential buildings being
demolished, a local school was destroyed, making the Aberfan accident a full-scale tragedy. When
a torrent of coal waste hit the school, over 240 pupils were inside it. Ultimately, 116 children
and 28 adults did not survive.. The coal that fed the entire town took away half of its youth
in the flick of a moment. It is historically one of the worst tragedies in the history of Wales.
Coal mining was a traditional occupation for inhabitants of Aberfan for more than a century.
Even when the coal industry declined in the 1960s, the Aberfan pit kept working. In 1966,
the coal mine was still the primary source of income for a population of 5,000.
The town’s entire economy depended on the mine. It came with a price,
though. Aside from the fact that the burden of coal mining was taking a toll on miners’ health,
operations in the pit were threatening the entire town.
The inevitable part of the coal extracting process is dealing with the coal waste.
The so-called spoil consists of the remaining ore after the coal is extracted, fine particles
of coal and ash, of which none can be used. What miners do with spoil is dump it aside,
creating large heaps of waste. These heaps, or spoil tips, can grow over 100 feet tall.
By 1966, the Aberfan mine produced seven such tips, five standing right above the village.
Residents of Aberfan were suspicious about spoil tips as a looming threat over their heads.
Many of them worked in the mine and were aware of the dangers from these heaps of waste.
In 1944, a part of tip 4 slid down and stopped only 500 feet from the first
row of houses, and it was not the only time Aberfan was threatened by the coal waste.
Over the years, the people of Aberfan filed many complaints to the National Coal Board
(NCB) in charge of the mine about the heaps and the danger they posed.
The most worrying was tip number 7, positioned right above the town school. In 1963, the tip
shifted slightly, but the NCB claimed it was just an insignificant event, and the tip continued to
be used for dropping waste. Whatmore, it remained the only active tip in 1966. At the time of the
disaster, tip 7 was estimated to be 111 feet high, containing around 297,000 cubic yards of waste.
On the night between October 20 and 21, tip 7 subsided by 10 feet. The spoil movement
was discovered at 7:30 by the morning shift workers. The movement resulted from increased
rainfall during the entire month and the saturation of the tip. One of the workers
reported it to his superiors, who ordered all the work on tipping waste to stop for the day.
Unfortunately, none of them knew that this was just the beginning of a disaster.
At 9:15, at Pantglas Junior School, a deafening sound caught students’ attention, similar to the
sound of a jet engine. Moments later, a giant wave of liquified spoil swallowed the entire building.
It broke walls as if they were made from cardboard. The liquid coal waste poured in
from the windows to the inside of the school. Students and their teachers had no time to
panic or run away. Some teachers tried to protect the children with their bodies,
but the torrent was too strong to be stopped. It was all over in just a couple of seconds.
On the hill above the town, almost half of tip 7 was missing. Around 140,000 cubic yards of spoil
that broke off slid down the hill and toward the town. Flowing at the speed of 21 miles per hour,
a wave of liquid coal waste destroyed everything in its path, including two water mains.
The water that spouted enhanced the liquidity of the spoil and made it even more deadly.
After the slide stopped, the spoil re-solidified, a 30-feet-tall pile of coal waste covered the
area where houses and the school used to be. The entire valley along the spoil’s way went black.
The silence that occurred brought the inhabitants to their senses.
The whole town rushed to the scene to clear the waste and reach the survivors. People’s children
were buried under the pile, so it was no wonder why everyone was frantically digging in the spoil.
However, the actual rescue operation began only when the first batch of miners arrived 20 minutes
after the accident. These men were experienced with the job and knew that the sheer will to dig
was not enough. Furthermore, it could do more harm than good. Digging spoil was tricky as the pile
threatened to collapse if not approached properly. Just ten minutes past the accident, the call for
help reached the police and the fire brigade station in the nearby town of Merthyr Tydfil.
At 10:30, a BBC report informed the nation of the disaster, and volunteers poured into
Aberfan to help the rescue operation. Miners dug in shifts, gradually revealing the remains
of the school building and houses around it. Thousands of volunteers traveled to Aberfan
to help the search for survivors, but the experts from the coal mine did the main job. In addition,
the Territorial Army was called in to establish order and secure the passage for ambulance cars.
Among the first survivors to be found were five pupils saved by the dinner lady Nansi Williams,
who shielded the children with her own body. The last survivor was rescued from the school
building at 11:00. After that, the sounds of kids screaming for help began to fade away,
but the miners kept digging. Desperate to reach the kids trapped under the rubble,
they were able just to dig out their dead bodies. The number of casualties was increasing
with each hour. A temporary mortuary was established in Aberfan’s Bethania Chapel.
Parents formed lines in front of the chapel in the cold rain, seeking their children among the
bodies lying on pews. For the seven days that the rescue operation lasted, they kept coming
back looking for their loved ones. The death toll was devastating.
One hundred and forty-four people were killed in the accident. Of that number, 116 were children,
almost half of Aberfan’s youth. In the school, the slide killed 109 pupils and five teachers.
The following day after the accident, the first funeral took place. On October 27,
a mass funeral for 82 victims was organized at Bryntaf Cemetery in Aberfan. Two days later, Queen
Elizabeth II visited Aberfan, showing signs of deep grief for the tragedy that struck this small
town in Wales. It was one of the rare moments in Queen’s public life that she showed her emotions.
The citizens of Aberfan were touched by the Queen’s visit but were angered by the behavior
of Lord Robens, the chairman of the National Coal Board, which most people found responsible for the
tragedy. Upon visiting the Aberfan, he defended his organization by claiming there was no way
anyone could have known the tip 7 was partly based on the ground from which water springs emerged.
Combined with heavy rains in the previous three weeks,
these springs have led the spoil to become saturated and prone to slide.
However, the presence of these springs was familiar to everyone in the area.
Moreover, springs had been marked on relevant maps since 1874. For years, residents of Aberfan
pointed to NCB’s wrong decision to establish the tip on this location. They complained about the
flooding bringing black water to their town and leaving a greasy residue. It was evident that the
tips were soaked, unstable, and thus a threat to the town. Residents repeatedly petitioned the NCB
to take action regarding the drainage ditches that were supposed to desaturate the tips.
Until the disaster in October 1966, the NCB did absolutely nothing on this matter.
In the eyes of the angered people of Aberfan, Lord Robens’ claim was nothing but a blatant lie and
a shameless attempt to take responsibility away from his organization. On October 25, 1966, the
Secretary of State for Wales formally appointed a tribunal to inquire about the disaster.
After interviewing 136 witnesses in an inquiry that lasted five months, the Tribunal published
its report on August 3, 1967, blaming the National Coal Board. They accused
the organization of ignorance and ineptitude in handling events that led to the disaster.
Shamefully, neither NCB nor any of its employees were prosecuted on this matter.
None of the staff inside NCB has been punished or sacked. The NCB chairman, Lord Robens, did offer
to resign, but only after the Minister of Power assured him that he would reject his resignation.
Citizens of Aberfan were denied justice but were not forgotten by the nation.
In the months following the disaster, 1,750,000 pounds were collected intended for the relief
of all people who had suffered from the tragedy. But, unfortunately, not all the
money went to those who needed it the most. A sum of 150,000 pounds was used to clear the remaining
tips since the National Coal Board refused to cover the entire cost of the operation.
The removal of the tips made the Aberfan landscape look completely different today
than it was in 1966. However, the scars of the tragedy have remained for a long time after.
Many innocent lives were lost, but the lives of those who survived were tarnished.
The psychological effects of the disaster were tremendous. Over 150 inhabitants of Aberfan asked
for psychiatric help in years to come because of the nightmares and other traumas they experienced.
The mine and the threat of spoil tips were gone, but the people of Aberfan were left
to live with their sorrow. Lessons have been learned,
though. The Government improved the legislation regarding the governing of mine and quarry
spoil tips by introducing the Mines and Quarries (Tips) Act in 1969. Unfortunately,
it was a legacy of a tragedy that could and should have been prevented from happening.