50 years since Aberfan

robfosters

robfosters

robfosters

Caporegime
Joined
1 Dec 2010
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Location
Welling, London
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, one of the most tragic events ever to hit the UK. Over 100 primary schoolchildren killed though utter negligence.

Shocking stuff and I urge everyone to watch the Huw Edwards documentary on
iplayer.

Minutes silence across Wales at 9:15 to mark the time the landslide started.
 
I only heard about this tragic event for the first time on Wednesday. Thoughts and prayers to all concerned, what a truly tragic and awful disaster :(
 
Wasn't able to do the minutes silence unfortunately, would have liked to given my grandfather was one of those there digging people out. A real tragedy, Still bits of wales where green mountain-sides are broken up by black scars, showing where the waste has slid again.
 
Awful event. Saw a news clip interviewing a WPC who was one of the first on the scene, she said they were passing bodies of the kids out of the rubble and the guy next to her said "That was my kid" and just carried on :(
 
I remember it. One of the most shocking news events of my childhood. Landslips were not an uncommon event at the time, this was hugely worse due to the catastrophe unleashed on a small Welsh village and the parents and children who lived there.

It is a fact that there were major mistakes by the NCB and failure to be responsible for their actions or lack of action. Even after the event they were unwilling to pay for removal of existing tips and the charitable donations made for the survivors and relatives paid for this to go ahead.

A survivor this morning on radio 4 said that as a child he had lost most of his playmates and they could not play outside in the street because of the grief of local people who had lost their children. Very moving.
 
John40 said:
What ! have you been living in a cave for your whole life.
Click to expand...

To be fair I stumbled across it by complete accident on a Wiki browsing session only a year or 2 ago, for such a horrific event it's not that well known unless you were around at the time.
 
I don't remember it. Though I do remember seeing something about it on a "Century Disaster" VHS tape. Not cool, completely avoidable, just like Bhopal (sp?) and other stuff where people needlessly die.
 
RIP to all the little lives and lives lost!

One of the saddest stories I've ever heard - While working on the line to remove debris and the bodies of the child killed, A man passed one of the children along, then turned to a police officer and said "That was my child"... He then turned around and carried on working to try and save anyone who is left.
 
I knew about it but I guess it could be that I have family living in Wales, such a mess, saw an aeriel photo of the slide somewhere, just completely wiped everything in it's path.
 
Can't remember why, but only heard about this 2 or 3 years ago (suspect it was one of the magazine-type articles on BBC news). Was never mentioned at school (born '82).

Just terrible. I've got young kids myself, 6 and 3, and it certainly bites to think about what the families went through.
 
I heard about it a while back, perhaps on the anniversary 10 years ago, but have been reading about it again this morning. Such a horribly tragic event especially when it could have been avoided, alongside the utter coincodence of the timing; minutes after the kids arrive for school on the last day of the half-term. Tragic :(.
 
Wales paid a heck of a price throughout its history for coal. The north east of England wasn't far behind either.
 
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