The Coal Tip Above the School Changed Overnight. Then the Men on Top Had Another Problem Aberfan

Comments · 10

• BR

  @BrianCrouch-e3x · 3 days ago

  I was an impressionable 20 year old RAF mechanic at St. Athan when we heard of the tragedy. We were quickly transported there to help in any way we could. We started moving coal slurry by hand, while every few minutes we al stood perfectly still and silent as mine rescue men listened with iron rods pushed into the heaps of blackness. The very last survivor was pulled out of the wreckage at about half past eleven.<br>We then were directed to assist in building a pipeline from a place on the remaining tip where water was gushing out, down through a farm and to the river bank. All the rest of Friday and Saturday we worked where ever we were needed, sometimes shovelling to recover missing children, sometimes fetching pumps from an adjacent mine. I hadn’t been underground before then. We collapsed through exhaustion eventually on Sunday morning I think and were found sound asleep on the tiled floor of a ventilation fan building.<br>09.15 ish, 16th October 1966. It’s carved in my memory, for ever wondering what those 116 children might have become?

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• PE

  @petravitch4872 · 3 days ago

  Asked to pay, 144 paid with their lives. &nbsp;Never before, never forgotten,

• MI

  @miniward9182 · 1 day ago

  October 1966 I remember it well. My mum phoned me to put the TV on (Only 1 channel then) so I did. I stood and cried as my kids of same age were safe in school.<br>From the 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿Midlands UK. I had never cried at anything on TV before or since then. But, That terrible sight became a blot on my mind that resonated throughout my adult ‘life’s-troubles’. Only one was on parr with that and that was during the 1963 ‘Winter Freeze’.

• RU

  @russellmurray8102 · 5 days ago

  I was watching a history film on television at school, when the news broke about the disaster.

• TU

  @Tuffydipstick · 3 days ago

  60 years ago on October 21st.

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• MI

  @michaelplunkett8059 · 2 days ago

  Another Labour triumph.<br><br>Seize the coal mines, mismanage them for decades and a government run tragedy.

• 20

  @20chocsaday · 9 hours ago (edited)

  In 1963 the miners&apos; children were worth £500 each. Inflate that to get a present day amount and it is still not much. A couple gives a child life and helps grow. Five or ten years later the government has used your child&apos;s life and expects you to be happy with your future.<br><br>Now, if you have a child, you can give it to the government for the mincing machine that exists abroad. Be content with your future. While you have one. <br><br>There was a free standing tip a few miles away from the road. Black except for a thin bit of vegetation at the bottom.<br>Later it caught on a slow smouldering fire. <br><br>It showed at night They stopped tipping.<br><br>Then we could see the ash and red cinders, like red glazed pipe smashed up. <br><br>I was working near the base and one of the other workers said he would run up it as he had done before.<br>I could feel the heat coming off it from a hundred yards away. <br>He didn&apos;t run up. He couldn&apos;t see a path through the small flames that were pushing out of the ash.

• SC

  @scottnyc6572 · 23 hours ago

  I recall a similar situation perhaps it’s this one but it was an avalanche of snow.?

• GW

  @gwendawhittle5603 · 3 days ago

  I was 6 then

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• ST

  @stuartwilliams3164 · 3 days ago

  ABERFAN pronounced ABERVAN ! Narration should get the words right , ask for help !!

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