55th Anniversary of the Aberfan disaster.

 55th Anniversary of the Aberfan disaster.

 

An ariel view of the rescue work, Abefan, October, 1966.

Today is the 55^th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster. I was only four at the time but one of my early memories was the effect of this tragedy in my local community.  The council estate where I lived, in Ross-on-Wye (only a few miles from the Welsh border), had a lot of Welsh people living on it and many ex-miners from south Wales and the Forest of Dean. Even at that young age, I could sense that something serious had happened as all the adults went quiet and things were subdued for a few weeks.  Of course, back then, nobody would mention an event like this in front of children so we knew something had happened but not what it was. 

This post is my own small memorial to those who died, most of them only a little older than I was at the time. It is also a thank you to those men and women of the Police, Fire Brigade, Ambulance Service and Civil Defence Corps who took part in the emergency operations at the time and to the thousands of volunteers including men from the local pits, the Navy and Army who helped in the aftermath.

 Aberfan is about four miles (6 km) south of Merthyr Tydfil in south Wales.  In 1966, there were around 5,000 people living in the village, largely employed in the local coal mine.  Since the early 1900s, large spoil heaps of coal waste had built up around the village. One of these, Tip No. 7, had been built over a spring. After three weeks of heavy rain, the spring water turned the base of the tip into slurry and destabilsed the whole thing which then collapsed into the village.

At 9:25 am, on the 21^st October,  the Merthyr Tydfil police and fire brigade received phone calls telling them of the disaster.  Shortly afterwards they contacted the local hospitals, the ambulance service and the local Civil Defence Corps.  Despite the swift response of the emergency services and volunteers from the coal mine, just 6 adults and 29 children were rescued but no one else was found alive after 11.00am on the first day. From then on, the recovery operation, which continued until 28^th October, only found those who had died. In total. there were 116 children and 28 adults killed as the slurry engulfed Pantglas Junior School and a row of houses. 

The work of the Civil Defence Corps and the emergency services was covered in an article from  the "Civil Defence - The Fourth Arm"  magazine  of November 1966.

 

 

Right click on the above picture and choose "open in new tab" to get a readable version of the page.

 

Right click on the above picture and choose "open in new tab" to get a readable version of the page.  

 

 An Industrial Civil Defence Service (ICDS) unit from a local works was on the scene within an hour.

Over 1200 Civil Defence Workers were amongst the thousands of volunteers at Aberfan.

Work was able to continue through the night using floodlights that were largely supplied by Civil Defence.

CD Welfare section and the Women’s Voluntary Service provided refreshments and operated four rest centres at the Miners’ Welfare Hall, Aberfan Cinema, Smyrna Chapel and the village’s Welsh Baptist Church,. where those helping could get some sleep.

Although this article concentrates on the work of Civil Defence In the disaster, it must be remembered that they were part of a well co-ordinated effort led by the Fire Brigade and the Local CD Officer Ron Hicks  involving the ambulance service,  Police and mines’ rescue teams amongst so many others.

A local newspaper reporter wrote:

“Many time I have attended exercises to see how the fire and other emergency services would work together in a time of catastrophe. Somewhere an imaginary atomic bomb has been dropped and all around there are imaginary casualties.  This, alas, is no exercise, this the real thing. This is reality – with no briefing noted handed out beforehand. This is grim and ghastly.”

 

This is a very brief clip of Mr Ron I. Hicks MBE, the Head of Glamorgan Civil Defence Corps talking about possible casualties on the day of the disaster from Getty Images.

This Pathe News report “This is Tragedy”, filmed during the rescue period, shows the work being done and the scale of the disaster.  Some of the images are quite harrowing and really show the event’s impact on those helping and living there.

 For a more detailed account, there is the Aberfan Disaster Wikipedia page and this BBC article made for the fiftieth anniversary.  This article from Wales Online covers the mistakes which allowed the disaster to happen.