Aberfan

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Aberfan (Template:Pronounced, approximately abervan) is a small village five miles (8 km) south of Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.

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The Aberfan disaster

The village of Aberfan suffered a tragedy on October 21 1966 which gained headlines across Europe and is still synomynous with the area to this day. At 09:15 on that fateful day, colliery waste tip number 7 (containing unwanted rock from the local mine) slid down Merthyr Mountain. As it collapsed, it destroyed 20 houses and a farm before going on to demolish virtually all of Pantglas Junior School and part of the separate senior school. The pupils had just left the assembly hall, where they had been singing "All Things Bright and Beautiful", when a great noise was heard outside. Had they left for their classrooms a few minutes later, the death toll would probably have been much lower, as the classrooms were on the side of the building nearest the landslide.

Image:Aberfan Disaster.jpg
The Aberfan Disaster 21 October, 1966

In total, 144 people were killed, 116 of them children, most of them between the ages of seven and 10. Five teachers, including the deputy head, were also killed in the accident.

The Mayor of Merthyr set up the Aberfan Disaster Fund for both the bereaved and the village as a whole, collecting nearly 90,000 donations totally approximately £1,750,000 by the time the fund closed in 1967. After lengthy appeals from the residents of Aberfan, part of the fund (£150,000) was used to make the remainder of the waste tip safe and the Coal Board avoided the costs of doing the whole job from its own resources. The Labour government paid back the £150,000 in 1997, although taking account of inflation this should have been £1.5million.

Lord Robens of Woldingham, chairman of the National Coal Board (NCB), did not rush to the scene; he instead went to accept an appointment as chancellor of the University of Surrey. Subsequently, he misrepresented the cause of the slide to the community and falsely claimed that nothing could have been done to prevent it. Robens never apologized.

At the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Aberfan Disaster, the NCB was found responsible for the disaster, due to "ignorance, ineptitude and a failure of communication". The collapse was found to have been caused by a build-up of water in the pile and, when a small rotational slip occurred, the disturbance caused the saturated, fine material of the tip to liquefy and flow down the mountain. In 1958, the tip had been sited on a known stream (as shown on earlier Ordnance Survey maps and had previously suffered several minor slips. Its instability was known, both to colliery management and to tip workers, but very little was done about it. Merthyr Tydfil Borough Council and the National Union of Mineworkers were cleared of any wrongdoing. No NCB employee was sacked, demoted or even disciplined.

The NCB was ordered to pay compensation to the families at the rate of £500 per child.

Merthyr Vale Colliery was closed in 1989.

In February 2007 the Welsh Assembly announced the donation of £2M to the Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund, in part as recompense for the money requisitioned by the government in the immediate aftermath of the disaster.

References

See also

External links

This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Aberfan.


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