The Aberfan Disaster: a simple guide to what happened
To mark the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, I have reposted my (now unavailable) blog posts from a decade ago describing the tragedy. Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the terrible and tragic Aberfan landslide disaster in South Wales. Ten years ago I published a four part summary of what happened on that terrible […]
Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster in South Wales, Britain's worst landslide disaster, in which 116 children and 28 adults were tragically killed. This guide provides a simple overview of the events that unfolded on that fateful day in 1966.
The village of Aberfan, nestled close to Merthyr Tydfil, was once a thriving hub for coal mining. The surrounding Merthyr Vale colliery produced waste that was dumped into a series of slag heaps on the slopes above the village. Directly beneath one of these tips, Tip Number 7, stood the Pant Glas Junior School.
On the morning of the disaster, a crew arrived at Tip Number 7 to commence work around 7:30 am. They observed the tip beginning to slide, with the crane track deforming by approximately 3 meters. However, due to a lack of communication, they were unable to report the issue promptly. Despite recognizing the problem, they decided to move the crane back from the edge of the slide and cut the overhanging rails. By 9 am, the tip had receded by another three meters.
The tipping crew, Gwyn Brown and Leslie Davies, witnessed the tip rising rapidly from its depression, forming a wave-like motion that raced towards the Aberfan village. Davies described the scene as "waves of muck, slush and water," and he heard a voice urging him to "come out of there, for God's sake." Fellow miners, Trevor Steed included, joined the desperate race to escape the advancing landslide.
The landslide displaced around 105,000 cubic meters of spoil, moving at a speed of 17 to 34 km/h over a distance of approximately 500 meters. The disaster engulfed 16 houses and the Pant Glas Junior School. Ultimately, the Aberfan Disaster claimed 144 lives and injured 35 more, most of them young children. Horrifying photographs capture the miners desperately searching through the debris to save the trapped children, but the likelihood of survival in such circumstances was grim; the last survivor was pulled out less than two hours after the accident.
Written by urgent.news from Eos's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
