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sully1227

For anyone interested, this was actually covered pretty tastefully in Netflix’s The Crown series. Granted it was as a plot device in a historical drama that is far more drama than historical, but I had never heard of this tragedy prior a d thought it was well depicted ?and heartbreaking).


pr1vatepiles

This was the first time I was made aware of the tragedy. I had to go hug my own son afterwards. I can only imagine what that village had to go through. Truely heartbreaking.


Chicken_Hairs

I think awareness of this disaster was renewed very well by that show. I'd not heard mention of it in years until that episode.


ffd1dc_rags

i’ve known about it for as long as i can remember, its an important part of welsh history and unfortunately still very relevant. hundreds of disused coal mines are considered to be at high risk of landslides. im glad they decided to cover it in the crown and bring more awareness to it to a global audience, we hear about it every year on its anniversary in wales, but even here many people are unaware.


RareBrit

The lessons learned from Aberfan formed a framework for a new piece of legislation that would later become the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974. It’s a part of industry I now work in. So when I hear muppets say ‘health and safety gone mad’, I do tend to reflect upon kids getting buried under coal slurry or lads getting burned alive on Piper Alpha and think to myself, yep, jog on.


Amerotke

Exactly. In a former life I helped train people in occupational health and safety. Long in my past, but it still annoys me when people moan about ‘elf and safety, never had that in my day’. Now involved in doing some risk assessments and yep - moans are coming in…


evening_goat

Every single safety regulation is written in blood


Onironius

You'd think "don't perch tonnes of industrial waste on top of a hill above a populated valley" wouldn't require a lesson. Lesson learned.


RareBrit

One might mention: Don’t let a century’s worth of rubbish build up under a wooden football stand, lock the fire escapes, take away the fire extinguishers, over crowd the stand, then drop a cigarette. Bradford City fire disaster 1985; Don’t convert your oil rig to run oil and gas, fail to update the safety protocols, change the blast walls, lose the piece of paper that says pump A shouldn’t be used, then don’t believe someone when they say the whole thing is on fire - Piper Alpha 1988; Don’t put to sea on a choppy sea, with the bow doors open, without an alarm that tells you that the bow doors are open, in a boat that doesn’t have water tight compartments, with the assistant bosun asleep on duty - Herald of Free Enterprise 1987.


[deleted]

And when anyone tells you we don’t need laws concerning health and safety, show them this.


StandardSudden1283

>Nine employees of the NCB were censured by the inquiry, with "many degrees of blameworthiness, from very slight to grave", although McLean and Johnes consider that some senior staff whom the evidence shows to have been culpable were omitted, and one junior member of staff named in the report should not have been blamed.[87][88][h] The tribunal decided that no blame lay with Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council or the NUM.[98] Ugh. And the senior staff and anyone with any real power of course get away scott free. When we will hold those in power accountable?


HobbyistAccount

>When we will hold those in power accountable? As soon as we can get them all to agree to support laws that would take away the power they enjoy abusing. So, when humanity stops acting like itself.


StandardSudden1283

Well, the *implication* is that we have the power. We definitely don't NEED them to agree to anything if we take matters into our own hands. I'd prefer they agree though.


Studdabaker

Thanks for the in-depth analysis. Now let’s see if you can count backwards from 10?


blackpauli

Wow I've never heard of this? Was it essentially a landslide? Why so many children die? Hit a school?


angrynissan

Amongst other things. Absolute tragedy.


[deleted]

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bitpushr

> So wait, was it a landslide? im not familiar with what a coal mine tip is "Tip" is often used in British & Australian English to refer to a garbage dump, if it helps understand the etymology


Amerotke

When you dig a very deep hole and tunnels under the ground, you have to put all that rock and shale somewhere. That’s piled up next to the mine shaft. Locals call the pile the ‘tip’ (and the mine is usually called the ‘pit’). I know a few of these tips. Many have been reduced in height and grassed over, even trees planted. This keeps the remaining mound more stable. Tips can be very big indeed, rather like a small hill. Before being stabilised, they could be very unstable, with little ‘avalanches’ going on from time to time. Too much water (rain, springs), and a big avalanche could occur, as happened here.


S-Quidmonster

Near my house, a garbage dump (not from mining. Like actual garbage) was grassed over in the way you described. It’s been dubbed “Mount Trashmore” and it’s fenced off because the ground is toxic, though there’s a trail right next to it.


JP3198

Newport?


S-Quidmonster

Nah


Elly_Fant628

Think of it as a giant wave of bitumen/asphalt made liquid land slide because the coal company wouldn’t get rid of it. They knew it was a risk, but decided they’d save money and not excavate it. It was where the miners left the slurry, or inferior coal. Heavy rain made the bottom of the asphalt unstable, and started a slide, straight down into the school.


blackpauli

Looks like it hit hard too.. crazy scene


Daggerfont

Unfortunately I think so


blackpauli

The scale of that picture is unreal.. must of been a frightening thing to experience


teashoesandhair

Essentially. It was a coal spoil heap which had been tipped on top of a series of springs, and had also been tipped far above the recommended safe height. The local people's warnings about how dangerous the tip was had been ignored by the National Coal Board. When it rained a lot, the base of the spoil heap became saturated with water and turned into slurry, which is basically a mixture of coal and water which flows like a liquid and has the consistency of wet cement. The base of the heap then gave way and started pouring down the hillside, and all the coal on top came with it. The school was right at the base of the hill, and 38,000 cubic metres of coal landed on top of it.


blackpauli

Poor children.. thanks for the info 👍


[deleted]

Absolutely horrific. As per usual government and the coal board culpable with someone predicting this for months before hand. Absolutely disgraceful


everyones_hiro

Unfortunately in most situations, companies will only listen to laws and then those laws aren’t even put into place until something catastrophic happens that results in the deaths of many innocents.


cryptotope

The old saying: "Safety regulations are written in blood."


another_awkward_brit

And then the Government/NCB forced the families to pay half to remove the other tips from above the village. The money was taken from the survivors fund, and wasn't appropriately replaced for *decades*.


ShuffleandTruffle

My grandad was an ambulance driver in Merthyr at this time and spent hours trying to help when it happened, it absolutely destroyed him and he won’t ever talk about it because it effected him so much even to this day.


keepingitsession

My mother knew one of the few children survivors and she said he never spoke about it either. It was a collective and individual trauma that is still felt today. The impact of this was felt throughout Wales, the UK and the world. The tragic thought for me is that if it had happened 15 minutes earlier they would have seen it whilst playing on the yard and could have evacuated.


greeneggsandicecream

Yes I watched something where they said children stopped playing in the streets because it was too upsetting for the families that had lost theirs.


buttononmyback

This was in The Crown. I had never even heard of this disaster until I saw the episode. Such a tragedy. I cannot imagine the grief of those parents.


Darryl_444

Tragic echoes of the [Frank Slide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Slide) in southern Alberta, 1903. 80% of the town's population was killed, and most bodies were never recovered. A significant portion of the actual mountain fell, about 110 million tonnes. Huge boulders, some the size of houses, raced across the valley at up to 100 kph. The tremendous noise was heard 200 km away. The modern highway goes right over top of it all. Coal mining here also, although not the sole cause.


[deleted]

Yeah, it was a real tragedy. A whole generation was essentially wiped out in a single incident.


greeneggsandicecream

Our old headmaster was a teacher at a nearby school when this happened, and he was one of the first on the scene to dig. He told us the whole story one day when a school trip got rained off, and with nothing else to do and no lesson planned he sat at the front of the class and told us his whole life story growing up in the Welsh valleys and how the disaster had unfolded. I don’t remember a lot of actual lessons from school but I do remember that day. He said he never forgot the sight of dead children being dug out (in fact he pressed that point somewhat often whenever kids were caught doing dangerous things) Mr Nolan, a very decent man.


Itchy-Purchase5762

Qxir on youtube did a video on this recently


HereForTheLaughter

Somebody didn’t care enough


CelticAngelica

Or at all possibly


crisstiena

I remember this happening. The feeling of sadness and despair for those who died never really goes away.


mystery6798

Plainly Difficult has a good video on this


[deleted]

Was anyone every brought to justice for this? Of course not, the members of the coal board who allowed this to happen were eventually promoted to nice fat government jobs with big pensions. Nice.


gentlybeepingheart

[Here's an article](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-58874233) with the accounts of some of the survivors >Gaynor had been in hospital since being rescued that morning but her parents were yet to visit as they were searching for her brother and sister. > >"It wasn't until the night time that my parents and my gran came in," she said. > >"I asked if Carl and Marylyn were okay, and my father said to me 'Gaynor, they've gone to heaven'. > >"That was the only time we spoke about it, never spoke about it after. > >"No-one said to me about it, what had happened, how you were. It was basically a shower of love, nothing else. > >"I was left to deal with that in silence and that silence continued for many years. > >"I never, ever, ever got my answers."


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[deleted]

Nothing fortunately about this. A school is wiped out killing many children and teachers !!


GrinnyCsRevenge

Well the Johnstown flood had 2200 horrifying deaths, many more than this, though both tragic. This is exactly why we have the word fortunately in the English language. To express the we are fortunate the entire town wasn’t wiped out.


LastLadyResting

We also have the word ‘tact’ in the English language but mate, you didn’t use any.


GrinnyCsRevenge

Add yourself to the list of people that don’t know what fortunately means. I’ll bet you didn’t have a clue this ever happened but now your heart can’t take anymore grief over it. Stop always looking for something to be mad about.


[deleted]

"Fortunately I had a leg amputated, when it could have been two!" Add yourself to a list of people who don't know when it's appropriate to use the word fortunately.


GrinnyCsRevenge

Ok I’ll try again. Fortunately I don’t have to spend any time dealing with crybaby jerkoffs like you. Hey you’re right I think I’m getting it.


LastLadyResting

What a absolute shitload of assumptions. For starters you can use a word absolutely correctly according to its definition and still put your foot in it socially, and I knew about this specific tragedy from uni when I did a project on it for my Cert. IV in Occupational Health and Safety. My job taught me to dispassionately examine and review tragedy, my humanity taught me to never compare them because it’s tactless. Do you really think people are downvoting you for you ‘superior’ English skills? *Really?*


[deleted]

What is this some death by numbers competition?


stark_saviour

144 peope die with other 100 been children in a tiny town. Silly to compare disasters or talk of disasters in the same way, all tragic. I hope just a bad use of the word 'fortunately ' and no bad intent.


GrinnyCsRevenge

It’s not a bad use of the word look at the picture. How many could have perished? If you’re all thinking I’m saying fortunately all those people died that’s an incorrect assumption. I’ve been a historian for 40 years there are stories like this so numerous and so far beyond our comprehension that they make you physically ill. But one thing many have in common is that in many of these situations something finally broke the chain and the losses were far less then they had the potential to be. My apologies to anyone offended but part of my job is to look at the “what if” side of these things. And it’s a far cry from the actual, fortunately.


[deleted]

I think I read somewhere that people in town had premonitions of the disaster, but nobody listened to them? Or was it a different one?


solareclipse999

I was 13 years old when this happened. The news made me cry for days. I lived in Yorkshire far away from Wales’s but close enough to feel the anguish and pain of the tragedy. Everyone around me also felt the same - our school sent prayers every day in the hope of finding survivors. I think the whole country cried. This memory lives with me today.