Remembering the victims of the Aberfan disaster

[geardaddy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster

The Aberfan disaster was a catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip in the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, on 21 October 1966, killing 116 children and 28 adults. It was caused by a build-up of water in the accumulated rock and shale, which suddenly started to slide downhill in the form of slurry.[2]

Over 40,000 cubic metres of debris covered the village in minutes, and the classrooms at Pantglas Junior School were immediately inundated, with young children and teachers dying from impact or suffocation. Many noted the poignancy of the situation: if the disaster had struck a few minutes earlier, the children would not have been in their classrooms, and if it had struck a few hours later, the school would have broken up for half-term.

Great rescue efforts were made, but the large numbers who crowded into the village tended to hamper the work of the trained rescue teams, and delayed the arrival of mineworkers from the Merthyr Vale Colliery. Only a few lives could be saved in any case.

The official inquiry blamed the National Coal Board for extreme negligence, and its Chairman, Lord Robens, for making misleading statements. Parliament soon passed new legislation about public safety in relation to mines and quarries.





Aberfan: Under the Arc Lights

Ask what was normal in green nature and its pain: Will rain undermine our homes and us again?

Ask those scrabbling garden-breakers, the mountain sheep Where are the classroom's children?—and then weep.

0 martyred town shorn 6f its crown of glory!

That dumpy matriarch scanning in our fury For faces of first-borns in the two handed- bier;


All the elements of tragedy, are here.

Waters of history still in midnight's deep Drip in Ceridwen's cauldrons; rage eistedd- fod, seep Into the jagged stalactites of hearts' hours. Crushed out of life like paper-petalled flowers.

Ask courting couples whose coats took dust off the tips; And hand back to the heavens stars on the future lips; Children conceived in mist whose play- ground it had made.

Blame breeds guilt with blind anger in its road.

The whole bare drama played . out as it looms To a world-shared audience in their evening room; One human chain of rescue under arc-light glare.

All the elements of tragedy are here.

KEIDRYCH. RHYS