Aberfan 50 years on: Disaster that robbed village of a generation

It may have been a gloomy, foggy morning, but the youngsters of Pantglas Junior School had a spring in their step.

Days of heavy rain had done nothing to dampen their spirits as they prepared for their half-term holiday, and as an extra treat they would be allowed home at midday.

The assembly had been a little bit depleted that day. The heavy fog had delayed the school bus from the neighbouring village of Mount Pleasant, and some of the youngsters decided to walk.

They would never have been so glad to have been late for school.

A few minutes after finishing a chorus of All Things Bright and Beautiful, the school would be engulfed by a mound of colliery waste in a disaster which still has the ability to make hairs stand up on the back of the neck.

Within the space of a few minutes Pantglass Junior School was engulfed by an unstoppable tide of colliery waste, as 1.4 million cubic feet of slurry came crashing against the walls of the building.

Gaynor Minett, who was eight at the time, recalled the horror four years later.

"Mr Davis, our teacher, got the board out and wrote our maths class work and we were all working, and then it began," she said.

"It was a tremendous rumbling sound and all the school went dead.

"You could hear a pin drop. Everyone just froze in their seats. I just managed to get up and I reached the end of my desk when the sound got louder and nearer, until I could see the black out of the window. I can't remember any more but I woke up to find that a horrible nightmare had just begun in front of my eyes."

Gaynor's brother Carl, seven, and sister Marilyn, 10, both perished in the disaster.

Over the past half-century, huge quantities of mining waste from the National Coal Board's Merthyr Vale Colliery had been deposited on the side of Mynydd Merthyr, directly above the village of Aberfan.

Huge piles of loose rock and mining spoil had been built up over a layer of highly porous sandstone that contained numerous underground springs, and several tips had been built up directly over these springs.

Three years before the disaster, the local authorities had raised specific concerns about spoil being tipped on the mountain above the village primary school, but the NCB had failed to act.

Early on the morning of October 21, 1966, after several days of heavy rain, part of the waste tip No. 7 started to subside. At 9.15 am more than 5.3 million cubic feet of water-saturated debris broke away and flowed downhill at high speed.

While it was still foggy in the village, with visibility down to about 160ft, it was clear and sunny on top of the mountain, and the tipping gang working there noticed the landslide start. However, the workmen were unable to raise the alarm because the telephone cable had been stolen.

A tip chargehand, who was working on the mountain on the day in question, spoke of his disbelief at the sight he saw unfold before him.

"I never expected it would cross the embankment behind the village which I could not see because of the mist which covered the whole of the village," he said.

"There was nothing I could do. We had no telephone to give an alarm or any warning device. I shouted, but it was no good."

The official inquiry into the disaster later concluded that the slip happened so quickly that a telephone warning would have made no difference.

Survivor Dilys Pope, who was 10 at the time, said, "We heard a noise and we saw stuff flying about. The desks were falling over and the children were shouting and screaming."

In one classroom 14 bodies were found and outside mothers struggled deep in mud, clamouring to find their children. Many were led away weeping.

The school's deputy head, 47-year-old David Beynon, had only been at the school for six weeks when his body was found amid the debris.

"He was clutching five children in his arms as if he had been protecting them," said a rescuer.

The slide engulfed the school and 20 houses, before finally coming to rest. A total of 144 people were killed, 116 of them children along with five teachers. Before reaching the school, the landslide hit a neighbouring farm, claiming three lives. A pregnant woman, whose son was killed in the tragedy, went into labour when she heard the news.

As people arrived at the scene, they could hear the cries of those still trapped on the fringe of the coal waste.

Ernie Husson, a photographer for our sister newspaper the Mid Wales Journal, was one of the first members of the press on the scene, and recalled the day that has haunted him ever since.

The 22-year-old had not been due to start work until 9.30am, but received a call from a colleague telling him the roof at Pantglas Junior School had collapsed.

"The first thing I thought was it would make a front page picture," he said.

"But as I was driving to Aberfan I saw the stream of emergency vehicles and realised it was a lot more serious than we first thought.

"When I got to Aberfan, it was chaos. Our apprentice photographer Mel Parry was already there and I threw him a camera from the car window and said 'you take some shots while I park the car'."

One of Mel's photographs became the famous image of the disaster. He had snapped a shot of the rescue of schoolgirl Susan Maybank in the arms of a policeman. Blown up and cropped, the image of Susan found its way in papers across the world the following day.

"Later in the day different teams arrived to help, firefighters, mineworkers and so on.

"It was chaos.

"Occasionally someone would call out to be quiet because they thought they had heard something under the rubble and it would go completely silent. Then the noise would start again when nothing was found."

At 12.30pm then prime minister Harold Wilson arrived, and on seeing the assembled press, gave them a smile.

"I said to him, 'It's not a laughing matter, sir'."

Ernie was told to go home by his editor, but returned at 6.30 the next morning when the enormity of the situation truly hit him.

"I was having tea in someone's house at 8am and I went to bits and had to get out," he said.

"I went back to the office and worked from there, wiring photographs of the disaster all over the world.

"We did not realise at the beginning how bad things were. It wasn't until the following morning when it started to dawn on us all how many children had been killed."

Emotions were particularly raw has a couple of weeks before the disaster Ernie had photographed parents presenting a petition to the headmistress, Ann Jennings.

"They were complaining about the state of the road as the children had to walk through slurry to get to school," he says.

"Sadly, the headteacher who received the petition was one of those who lost her life in the disaster.

The disaster had a huge effect on Ernie. Indeed, it took about 20 years for him to be able to talk about what he saw and what happened on that day.

"We were going on our honeymoon and my wife Pheone was driving to Manchester airport. I looked at the paper and there was a feature on Aberfan and I went to bits in the car.

"It has affected me and made me more aware and more sympathetic in covering certain jobs.

"Fifty years on and it is the biggest new story that I have ever covered and the biggest one that I will likely ever cover. Some aspects of it I have tried to blot out because you don't want the memories of it living with you.

"My memories and feelings are now that it should never have happened. At the time all the churches and everyone kept asking why, why did it happen, why did God allow it to happen?

"I went to the cemetery in Aberfan once and it looks very nice the way they have done it, but it's sad that so many lives had to be lost for it to be needed.

"I have not really watched the programmes on the television marking the 50th anniversary because I do not want to be reminded.

"It was a day I wish had never happened at all."

About 2,000 rescuers worked throughout the evening under floodlights in the hunt for survivors, despite the danger caused by the still shifting slag tip.

Initially, the same fog which had delayed the school bus also hit the rescue operation. One of the biggest problems getting vehicles to the site, which was in a cul-de-sac.

Many local miners shovelled to get the debris clear and worked non-stop for 10 hours, including one whose young daughter was thought to be dead.

Brian Roberts, of Woodside, Coalbrookdale, rushed to his parents' home in Aberfan, fearing they might have been hurt.

Mr Roberts, who grew up in the village, said he always feared something like that would happen.

"In fact, I always thought our house would get it," he said.

Mr Roberts said that 14 years earlier, when he still lived in Aberfan, a tip just behind the present one had moved.

"There were already a lot of complaints about the danger when they started to build the second tip, the one which collapsed."

Fortunately, his parents' house, 300 yards from the stricken school, managed to avoid the disaster, as the slag heap plunged down the mountain in a slightly different direction. The home of his mother- and father-in-law, also escaped the avalanche.

"I risked my neck all the way," he said.

"I thought my parents and my in-laws might all be buried. I was so worried I remembered nothing about the journey.

Mr Roberts, who had attended the school as a child, said: "It was a terrible sight. I knew so many of the children and their parents you see.

"I knew at least 20 of the children who died very well. My own children had played with them."

Mr Roberts' mother Minnie, who grew up in Atcham, near Shrewsbury, told the Shropshire Star at the time that she had been putting out the milk bottles when she sensed something was wrong.

"Some little girls went past," she said.

"At first I though they must have finished school early to begin their half-term.

"Then I saw a little girl, she was screaming. She said the school had come down and the children were still under it.

"She was covered in mud and dirt from the waist down, I helped to clean her up."

George Thomas, the Minister of State for Wales, said: "A generation of children has been wiped out."

He said there was an abundance of similar tips across Wales, and added that the Government would look into the possibilities that it could happen again.

Dinner lady Nansi Williams realised something terrible was happening as the school building started to shudder. She told the children closest to her, how had been bringing her their classes' dinner money, to lie down on the ground. She then dived on top of them.

Kate Thomas, one of the pupils saved by her bravery, said: "It's only down to Nansi that I am here today."

The last child to be pulled from the rubble of the school alive was Jeff Edwards.

The then eight-year-old had just picked a new library book and walked back to his desk when he heard the rumbling sound, which many locals put down to a blast of thunder or a low-flying plane.

"The teacher said, 'It's only thunder, it will go soon'," Jeff recalled. "Then the next thing I remember was waking up and hearing shouts and screams."

For two hours Jeff was trapped, pinned under his desk and alive only because he happened to be in an air pocket. Those around him had died instantly.

The girl who had sat beside him in class, had her head right next to his face.

"I could see she was dead. There was no doubt about that," he said.

"I still see her sometimes. I can't stop it all coming back. I still have nightmares and sometimes suffer from deep bouts of depression."

Gaynor Minett, now 58-year-old mother-of-three Gaynor Madgwick, has written to books about the disaster.

She admitted the anniversary had brought it all back.

"I'm having sleepless nights again – I'm hoping to get through the next month and then let things return to normal," she said.

"I look at those photographs of men digging through the ruins of the school and I think: 'How did I ever get out of that?' It's a miracle that I'm here today."