#Pantglas Junior School

[wales-official]

Today is the twenty first of October – the day we remember what is known as the Aberfan Disaster. On this day in 1966, due to the incompetence of nine employees of the National Coal Board, 110,000 cubic metres of coal slurry crashed down the side of a mountain through a row of houses and into Pantglas Junior School, killing a total of 28 adults and 116 children. No survivors were pulled from the rubble after 11:00 a.m.

The people of Aberfan were submitted to massive trauma and suffering, and yet the people responsible did not face any consequences whatsoever.

Cofiwch Aberfan.

[world-of-wales]

THE WALES DIARIES ♚

28 APRIL 2023 || Day 2 Wales Visit - Aberfan Memorial Garden, Aberfan

The Prince and Princess of Wales visited the Aberfan Memorial Garden which lies on the site where the Pantglas Junior School once stood to pay their respects to those who lost their lives in the disaster in 1966.

They were greeted by schoolchildren at the site, while survivor Gaynor Madgwick showed Kate a number of newspaper cuttings about previous royal visits to the area.

William and Catherine were then guided around the garden by one of the Aberfan survivors, David Davies, and Professor Peter Vaughan, Lord Lieutenant of Mid Glamorgan.

The Prince and Princess of Wales laid a floral tribute at the memorial and the message left by the couple, which read: 'In loving memory.'

They also met trustees from the Aberfan Memorial Trust who are involved in ensuring the maintenance of the garden. William and Catherine also met and spoke to also met the 12 surviving members of the Aberfan Wives Group and the last surviving teacher at the school, Mair Morgan, 81, who taught the five year olds.

During their visit they spent time to speak with the members of public. Catherine also had her bag and heart stolen by one year old Daniel Williams.

[theroyalweekly]

#PrinceWilliam and #PrincessKate are here at the Pantglas Junior School Memorial Garden in Aberfan. 

They’re meeting survivors of the coal tip disaster that happened on this site in 1966. #PrinceandPrincessofWales -- South Wales News

[grandmaster-anne]

29 October 1966 Evening Standard: Today the Queen went to a silent Aberfan to share its sorrow. She saw what had been the school; She spoke to parents who had lost their children when the mountain moved; She spoke to children who had escaped. The grief is etched on her and Prince Philip's faces and was echoed in her own words: 'There is nothing I can give them, but understanding and sympathy.' Pantglas Junior School, where this picture was taken, was overwhelmed in the avalanche of slurry eight days ago and many of its pupils are among the 147 known dead.

[nedsecondline]

British People: Some Historical Photos

On 21 October, 1966, a slag heap at Merthyr Vale colliery collapsed on to Pantglas Junior School in Aberfan village, killing 116 children and 28 …British People: Some Historical Photos

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I wrote this for Facebook five years ago on the 50th anniversary, but fuck it, I'll cross post here.

Also: FUN FACT! 40% of the UK's coal tips are in Wales. Thanks to their age and the increase in extreme weather events from climate change, they're going to cost between 500 and 600 million pounds in the next 15 years to stabilise.

***

Today is the 50th anniversary of Aberfan, but I suspect a lot of people probably don't know much about it by now. 50 years is a long time, to be fair. But also, a shit ton of stuff came out about it more recently that I think even people who remember it happening don't know about? So, I thought I might make a post-note-thingy to bring everyone up to speed.

So, the short of it for those completely not in the know is: on October 21st 1966, a coal tip on top of a mountain in the South Wales Valleys collapsed, causing what was essentially a landslide to rush down the slope and engulf the tiny village of Aberfan. It demolished houses; but perhaps more poignantly, it also hit Pantglas Junior school. The really upsetting thing here is that Aberfan was, and is, a tiny place - those children meant an entire generation was lost. And with terrible timing - had the spoil moved minutes earlier they’d have been in the playground and seen it coming, and been able to escape. Had it moved a few hours later, half term would have started, and no one would have been there.

Well, I say that - the really upsetting thing is that it was inherently avoidable. The above is the short version of events. This is the longer.

When the National Coal Board were picking where to build the tip they chose a site of sandstone, which as you intelligent and learned types all know, Facebookers, is porous, and the sandstone sat over multiple natural springs, which as you intelligent and learned types all know, Facebookers, are fucking everywhere in Wales, a country that literally lists rain as one of its main exports. The springs were clearly marked on maps of the neighbourhood, and more importantly, the locals all went and bloody told the NCB. Local children literally used to play in them. Sadly, in the history of Welsh Peasants vs English Mineral Barons, the day has never swung to the Welsh. So the tip got built directly above Aberfan on the side of Mynydd Merthyr.

In the years leading up to the disaster, three different coal tips at Aberfan had minor slips (including Tip Number 7, in fact; the one that would later cause the disaster). Multiple letters were written to the National Coal Board outlining the risks from both rainwater and the underlying springs, and they wrote multiple letters back, showing they were aware of the risk. One even acknowledged the risk to the school, in fact. But no one moved the tips. Why? Because the two men responsible for it didn't like each other, and refused to work with one another on the report.

In the weeks leading up to the disaster, the heavens opened and a Biblical deluge descended upon South Wales. It particularly pissed it down on October the 21st, 1966, and the side of Waste Tip Number 7 became so saturated that 120,000 cubic metres broke off and flowed down the mountain, the front part having liquefied, in a wave 12 metres high. 40,000 cubic metres smashed through a row of houses and into Pantglas Junior School. Eyewitnesses who survived talked afterwards of the noise, saying it was so loud they thought a plane was crashing on them. One teacher ordered them to hide under their desks. Parents rushed up there to try to claw their children out by hand, and were quickly joined by miners from the Merthyr Vale Colliery (later joined by more from the Deep Navigation and the Taff Merthyr Collieries.) As the news spread, hundreds upon hundreds of people rushed to Aberfan to help, until the quantity of untrained volunteers were actually getting in the way of the trained operatives who had arrived. Meanwhile, more mud and water was in free-fall down the mountain, making things harder; that, and a water pipe in the town was also destroyed, meaning even more flooding in town, and more hindrance to the rescuers.

The school was hit at 9.13. No one was pulled out alive after 11.

So with the sheer scale of the disaster now in mind, at this point, Facebookers, let’s take a quick look at the actions of Lord Robens of Woldingham.

Now, this colossal dick fungus was the Chairman of the National Coal Board at the time of the disaster. He was notable by his absence. The Secretary of State for Wales, Cledwyn Hughes, obviously started ringing him to find out when he was going to turn up - lest we forget, the NCB had merrily built a coal tip on unsuitable land against local protestations and had now inevitably killed 116 kids and 28 adults, so you’d sort of expect the festering piece of knob-skin in charge of the damn thing to get his bony hide over there and at least have the decency to look a bit sad. But it was in Wales, so Lord Robens hoped no one would give a shit and would move on, and so went to his investiture as Chancellor of the University of Surrey instead.

Yes, you read that right - he found out he'd caused and allowed 116 children to be buried alive, but he wanted to go to a fancy ceremony in his honour that would let him be a university Chancellor.

And his office covered up for him by lying to Cledwyn Hughes, claiming that Lord Robens was actually at Aberfan and personally directing the rescue efforts. One can only assume they didn’t realise how small Aberfan is, and thus how instantly you can tell if someone isn’t there.

So, on the evening of the following day, Lord Robens finally deigned to turn up at the site of mass death he was responsible for, whereupon he told the first camera he saw, in front of all the locals who had been telling them not to build the damn tip there, that there was nothing that could have been done to avoid the disaster, because the tip had been built on UNKNOWN NATURAL SPRINGS.

He wasn’t finished either, Facebookers. Naturally, the locals were ready to commit murder if the remaining tips around the village weren’t removed, but at first, the government refused, saying it would be too expensive. The locals, obviously, objected, and so stormed the buildings of the Welsh Office in Cardiff and poured bags of slurry through the offices. Perhaps, they suggested, the government might like to live with it instead. After the court case (see below), Lord Robens of Woldingfuck refused to use NCB funds to finance moving the tips, instead demanding a huge sum of money from the public disaster relief fund. £150,000, to be precise, which was a full 10% of the fund.

This endeared him to no one, even including his dear elderly white-haired mother. No word on whether or not he had to get a squad of ninjas to protect him from the locals, but I presume he did.

Then came the enquiries, where the standard ‘oh god we’re talking to Welsh peasants’ mentalities came out. The press had also behaved like a bag of smashed arseholes over the whole thing, including the notable account of a photographer telling a six-year-old child who had been pulled alive out of the mud to cry over the bodies of her dead mates to make a better picture. Add that to Lord Bollocks of Woldingfuck pricking about, and the locals had really been pushed around. At the enquiry into the deaths of the first 30 children, their names and causes of death were read out; there were shouts of ‘Murder!’ in the court. Then one boy’s name was read out, and his death reported as asphyxia and multiple injuries. His father stood up.

“No sir,” he told the judge clearly. “Buried alive by the National Coal Board.”

At which point the judge AND CAN YOU IMAGINE PATRONISING SOMEONE LIKE THIS told him:

“I know your grief is much that you may not be realising what you are saying - ”

“I want it recorded – ‘Buried alive by the National Coal Board.’” the father interrupted. “That is what I want to see on the record. That is the feeling of those present. Those are the words we want to go on the certificate.”

No word on whether or not that patronising piece of shit Judge died of knob rot in a foreign jail, but I like to think so.

Finally, our Cledwyn had enough at the asshattery of all involved, and so on the 26th October 1966 he appointed his own goddam inquiry and got in respected Welsh barrister and Privy Councillor Lord Justice Edmund Davies, in the hope that maybe then the locals of Aberfan would not become so incensed that they would resurrect Zombie Owain Glyndwr and march on the border, which was becoming a distinct option by that point; plus, our Cledwyn wanted some actual pissing answers. It became known as the Davies Inquiry, which Wikipedia informs me was, at that time, the longest inquiry of its type in British history at 76 days (“interviewing 136 witnesses, examining 300 exhibits and hearing 2,500,000 words of testimony.”)

Now, you may have picked up that there was definite fault with the NCB. You may have somehow inferred that. You may have read between the lines and thought, 'But Elanor, surely when the NCB were told not to put a coal tip on top of springs, and when the springs were even marked on the map, and then they did it anyway, surely only a goat or monkey could find the NCB innocent, especially when such a long inquiry was held?’

You are correct, Facebookers. And thus it was that in the final days of the inquiry, Lord Pissy Jizzbollock of Shittingfuck realised all was lost and essentially turned himself in, giving evidence to the inquiry that basically went 'Okay, you got us, the NCB should have been more careful, what are we like’.

The final findings of the Davies Inquiry:

“…the Aberfan disaster is a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by many men charged with tasks for which they were totally unfitted, of failure to heed clear warnings, and of total lack of direction from above… Blame for the disaster rests upon the National Coal Board. This is shared, though in varying degrees, among the NCB headquarters, the South Western Divisional Board, and certain individuals … The legal liability of the NCB to pay compensation of the personal injuries, fatal or otherwise, and damage to property, is incontestable and uncontested.”

They also found the NCB had been piss-poor at maintaining the tip anyhow, and confirmed that it had already suffered multiple minor landslides before the one that killed Aberfan’s children. Such is the history of environmental law, though.

Anyway, at this point Lord Fuck Off clearly realised that he had possibly fucked up big time here and so offered his resignation, but BRACE YOURSELVES.

His resignation was rejected by Harold Wilson, because Robens was good with Unions, and Wilson hated the Unions and so wanted to keep him active. Furthermore, nine members of the NCB were flagged as being to blame. No one ever received so much as a demotion. There were no repercussions whatsoever for anyone who had just caused the deaths of 116 children.

Compensation-wise: the NCB paid out compensation to the tune of £500 per child (in old money - today worth about £6512). Then the public also paid loads of money into a relief fund.

Here's the bit the people who remember all this happening may not know. Recently, we finally got to read the documents about how that money was managed. From Wikipedia:

"The management of this fund caused considerable controversy over the years. Many aspects of the aftermath of the Aberfan Disaster remained hidden until 1997, when the British Public Records Office released previously embargoed documents under the thirty year rule. These documents revealed new information about the machinations of Lord Robens, the NCB and the Charity Commission in the wake of the Aberfan Disaster.

At one point the Charity Commission planned to insist that before any payment was made to bereaved parents, each case should be reviewed to ascertain if the parents had been close to their children and were thus likely to be suffering mentally. At another meeting, the Commission threatened to remove the Trustees of the Disaster Fund or make a financial order against them if they went ahead with making grants to parents of children who had not been physically injured that day, and the Trustees were forced to abandon these payments.[20]

Although the Davies Report had found that the NCB’s liability was “incontestable and uncontested” and it was widely felt that the NCB should have to bear the entire cost of removing the dangerous tips above Aberfan, Robens refused to pay the full cost, thereby putting the Trustees of the Disaster Fund under “intolerable pressure”. Robens then “raided” the Fund for £150,000 to cover the cost of removing the tips – an action that was “unquestionably unlawful” under charity law – and the Charity Commission took no action to protect the Fund from Robens’s dubious appropriation of funds.[21]"

So, to sum up: They didn't want the people of Aberfan to actually have that money. The Charity Commission put parents through invasive and harrowing questioning to male sure they'd liked their dead kids sufficiently before they'd pay them compensation - and can you begin to imagine the trauma of that? When you're already torturing yourself over every cross word you ever might have said, over having sent them to school that morning, over everything? And along comes some screaming fuckweasel and demands to know if you truly loved your child? If you ever argued? If you were ever exasperated by them? They ask your neighbours, your friends, if you showed enough affection?

There aren't words.

The Charity Commission decided mental health did not exist. No dead child? Tough! You must be entirely fine and unaffected by having dug your barely-breathing child out of a tomb! The child is fine! No money for you. What do you mean counselling costs?

But oh lordy, back to Lord Bell-end of Twattingjizz again, look.

A court ordered him and the NCB to shoulder the costs of removing the tips and preventing further tragedy, having found that they were responsible.

And instead, he literally stole money from the survivors to do it.

And the Charity Commission let him.

In 2007, the Welsh Government paid £2 million into the fund to replace this money. The fund is still active today, helping the residents of Aberfan with the trauma.

Because hey, as I say, mental health: next came the trauma for the survivors, which is the part they utterly don’t tell you about. Children who had survived got survivors guilt, and never went outside - many couldn’t sleep with doors or windows closed. Multiple patients were prescribed sedatives, but were afraid to take them, desperately listening out to hear if the mountain was moving again. Birth rates, alcohol-related issues and health issues for pre-existing conditions all rose dramatically. Multiple people had breakdowns over the subsequent years. In 2003, the Journal of British Psychiatry published a study into the long-term psychological effects of the disaster. Half of the survivors had had PTSD at some point in their lives; as a group, the survivors were over three times more likely to develop lifetime PTSD than a comparison group who had also experienced life-threatening traumas; and 34% of the survivors still reported nightmares or sleep problems about the disaster.

It may be fifty years today, but Aberfan has not recovered. For so many of them, the whole thing is still happening. And somehow, Lord Robens of Woldingham never did go to fucking jail where he belonged.

And that, for them as don't know, is the tale of the Aberfan Disaster.

[tunglo]

The Aberfan disaster was 56 years ago today. Local people had been campaigning for years for the government and the Coal Board to remove the spoil tips above the village. It was, of course, deemed far too expensive.

Tip 7 - which had suffered two smaller slips in 1963 - was 111ft high by 1966, overlaying a natural spring, and after three weeks of heavy rain it became so saturated it slipped down the mountain. The first pic shows how it smashed through residential houses and straight into Pantglas Junior School. 

The timing of it was so disgustingly cruel. It was the last day of term - so if it had happened a few hours later the school would have been empty as the day was finishing at noon. Morning assembly had just ended and at 9:15 the kids were settling down in their classrooms - so if it had happened a few minutes earlier most of the kids would have survived, as the hall was relatively undamaged. 

As it was, the spill buried the classrooms, so most of those the avalanche didn’t kill instantaneously slowly suffocated as rescuers attempted to dig them out. Only 27 were eventually pulled out alive, one of those dying en route to hospital, and after 11am there were no more survivors, though body retrieval took a full week.

In total 144 people died - 28 adults and 116 children, the majority aged between 7 and 10. 

I was Mayor for a nearby borough the year of the 50th anniversary so had to go to a lot of memorials, etc, and it was so unbelievably upsetting even after all that time. Just the age old story of human life mattering less than money and convenience, culminating in rows of little white gravestones. 

[thegreatzeldini]

jesus I had never heard of this

uh live react to the wikipedia article under the cut criminey. cw for like 116 children and 28 adults dying and the surrounding horrors

The pupils of Pantglas Junior School had arrived only minutes earlier for the last day before the half-term holiday, which was due to start at 12 midday.

what a rotten trick of timing

Four hundred embalmers volunteered to assist with the cleaning and dressing of the corpses; a contingent that flew over from Northern Ireland removed the seats of their plane to transport child-sized coffins.

the phrase child-sized coffins is perpetually horrifying

In 1967 the Charity Commission advised that any money paid to the parents of bereaved families would be against the terms of the trust deed. After arguments from lawyers for the trust, they agreed that there was an "unprecedented emotional state" surrounding Aberfan, and suggested that sums of no more than £500 should be paid. Members of the trust told the commission that £5,000 was to be paid to each family; the commission agreed that the amount was permissible, but stated that each case should be examined before payment "to ascertain whether the parents had been close to their children and were thus likely to be suffering mentally", according to one member of the Charity Commission.

absolutely jaw dropping.

🤖 for the ask game!

Mt Rainier (Tahoma) is the most heavily glaciated* mountain in the contiguous 48 states. While it's not in a lot of danger of a big eruption like Mt St Helens, it is known to have the potential for something called a lahar, where a hot spot near the surface melts the glacier, which combines with loose rock and mud to form a superheated avalanche-like flow. (There hasn't been one in a few thousand years, but it could happen. There is at least one town up close to the mountain that does lahar drills, including schoolkids.)

* this is a fact I learned circa 1995 in a class on "environmental and geological catastrophes", I assume it is still true even if glaciers have declined generally.

[send me an emoji and I will send you a fun* fact about my special interest(s)] *"fun" is kind of relative here tbh

[jeff-rees-jones]

55 years ago today 116 little children went to school and didn't come home. Together with 28 adults they perished when a towering coal tip above the Pantglas Junior School, Aberfan, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales collapsed  and came sliding down the mountain until it buried the school.

https://aberfan.walesonline.co.uk/

[f-yeahbendaniels]

Holding back his own feelings was difficult for Tony, but as he said later: “You couldn’t cry. It’s showing your emotions too much and you shouldn’t if you’re down to help. It’s a bit like a doctor crying. Also, crying when they have lost their children is almost impertinent."  - Anne de Courcy, “Snowdon: The Biography” (2008). 

October 21 1966: The Aberfan disaster was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in Wales on 21 October 1966. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, and overlaid a natural spring. A period of heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to suddenly slide downhill as a slurry, killing 116 children and 28 adults as it engulfed Pantglas Junior School and other buildings. The tip was the responsibility of the National Coal Board, and the subsequent inquiry placed the blame for the disaster on the organisation and nine named employees.

Ben Daniels as Antony Armstrong-Jones, Lord Snowdon // 3x03 - “Aberfan” of The Crown (2019). 

[the-endless-storm]

At 9.15 am on Friday, October 21, 1966, a waste tip above the mining village of Aberfan began to slide down the mountainside, firstly destroying a farm cottage and killing all its occupants. It then approached Pantglas Junior School, where the children had only just returned to their classes after singing All Things Bright and Beautiful at their morning assembly. The slide then engulfed the school and about 20 houses in the village, killing 144 people, including 116 school children.

Workers up in the mountain had seen the slide start, but could not raise the alarm because their telephone cable had been stolen and down in the village, everybody heard the noise, but could see nothing, because of thick fog.

News of the tragedy travelled fast and hundreds of people stopped what they were doing and headed to Aberfan to try and help with the rescue. It was futile, as nobody was rescued alive after 11am and it was nearly a week before all the bodies were recovered.

On Mynydd Merthyr, directly above Aberfan, several tips containing millions of cubic metres of mining debris from the Merthyr Vale Colliery had been deposited over the years, onto highly porous sandstone that contained numerous underground springs. The NCB's area management had been made aware of the concerns regarding the tipping of spoil above the primary school, but these were largely ignored. In the days leading up to the disaster, there had been substantial bursts of heavy rain, which had caused 3–6 metres of subsidence on one of the tips. This then led to more than 150,000 cubic metres of debris breaking away and flowing downhill at high speed.

On 26th October 1966, a tribunal was appointed to inquire into the causes of and circumstances relating to the Aberfan disaster, which was chaired by Welsh barrister and Privy Councillor Lord Justice Edmund Davies.

The Tribunal's report found that:

The blame for the disaster rested entirely with the National Coal Board, and their "total absence of a tipping policy"

Repeated warnings about the dangerous condition of the tip had been ignored.

The tips had never been surveyed and were continuously being added to in a chaotic and unplanned manner. The disregard for the unstable geological conditions and the NCB's failure to act after previous smaller slides were found to have been major factors that contributed to the catastrophe.

The image is a composit I made of the memorial that stands in the village now, and a photo of men digging out the school from the day. The words are from the poem Cymro, that was written for the 50th anniversary memorial of the disaster.

[margaretroses]

Lord Snowdon visits Aberfan in South Wales following the tragic disaster on 21 October 1966, in which an avalanche of waste material from the nearby coal mine cascaded downhill and into the local village, engulfing Pantglas Junior School and other buildings in the area - killing a total of 116 children and 28 adults. 

Of Welsh background himself, Snowdon spontaneously took a train from London alone, in the second-class carriage with only a small suitcase containing pyjamas and a shaving kit. The first member of the Royal Family to make the visit, he arrived in Cardiff at 2am, the morning after the tragedy, and was then driven up to Aberfan. He left the emergency services to their carry on their rescue attempts and focused on providing comfort to parents, 50 of whom were waiting in Bethania chapel to identify the bodies of their children. 

According to his biographer, Anne de Courcy, Anthony “made it his job to visit the bereaved relatives, sitting holding the hands of a distraught father, sitting with the head of a mother on his shoulder for half an hour in silence. In another house he comforted an older couple who had lost thirteen grandchildren - in another where they were terribly upset, he offered to make a cup of tea, went into the kitchen and returned with a tray with cups for them all. He helped an older man persuade his son, who was clutching something in his tightly clenched fist, to open his hand. It was a prefect's badge, the only thing by which he had been able to identify his child..."

"Darling, it was the most terrible thing I have ever seen." - Lord Snowdon in a letter to his wife, Princess Margaret.

[maureen-thetealady-nottinghall]

ABERFAN

I wished we had known about Aberfan before we traveled through Wales.  We would have visited that little hamlet to pay our respects.  Although the horrific catastrophe took place over 50 years ago, I wonder if that community has ever really healed.  Losing half the town’s population of children, 116, and 28 adults in a matter of moments is something which, I imagine, you can never really ever put…

[princesselizabethandphilip]

Today 52years ago a landslide of coal slid down a mountain and engulfed Pantglas Junior School in Aberfan rip to the 116 children and 28 adults we remember them

[okwin16899]

See the moving Aberfan disaster poem performance to mark the tragic anniversary

October 21, 1966, saw the youngest and most vulnerable pay the highest price for the coal hewn from the ground, as the waste collided with Pantglas Junior School. การพนันออนไลน์

[mybeloved73]

#Aberfan, 55 years on. 🖤

21.10.1966 144 9.13AM, concrete & steel. It contains 144 clocks – the number of adults & children who died when a colliery spoil tip collapsed into homes & Pantglas Junior School. Clocks are set to 9.13am - the time of the disaster on October 21, 1966.