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Good Morning Motlies.
Today I am going with some more "History on your Doorstep", but I have lost track of the numbering.
The tragic mining "accident" in Turkey this week, which cost more than 200 miners their lives, brought back an incident from my childhood - the Aberfan landslide disaster - the worst coal mining disaster in British history, despite the fact that almost none of the victims had ever been underground.
The Mining village of Aberfan is located in a valley near Merthyr Tydfil, some 17 miles from where I was living at the time. The South Wales economy had been dominated for the previous 150 years by coal mining. By 1966, all the easy coal had been mined, and only deep coal was left - hundreds of feet undergound. This coal was brought to the surface, where it was sorted, sifted and washed. The waste then needed to be disposed somewhere. It couldn't be left in the valleys, because there was no space. All of the mining valleys were ribbon communities maybe 6 or 8 streets wide, and the end of one town was the beginning of the next. The only solution was to dump the waste on the top of the hills (locally referred to as mountains) on the sides of the valleys. These tips, called slag heaps were volcano shaped mounds sitting high above the towns.
On Friday the 21st October 1966, the children of Pantglas junior and primary schools were sitting in their classrooms at the start of the school day. The weather was miserable, it hadn't stopped raining for 2 days, but the kids were in a good mood because it was the last day before half term break.
Around 9.15, the mountain decided to move.
The combination of rain, and a spring under one of the slagheaps had turned the slag into a viscous liquid slurry, which once it started to slip turned into a black avalanche.
This avalanche engulfed Pantglas school and a dozen houses nearby. 116 children and 27 adults were killed in the disaster- the majority within the primary school walls.
As the news was reported a call was made for help to try and dig out any survivors and literally thousands of people responded to clear the slurry with their bare hands. One of those was my father.
Here are a couple of videos - one short, one long. If you have 10 minutes, just watch the beginning of the long one which features survivors and some dramatic reconstructions.