ABERFAN DISASTER 50 YEARS ON
SURVIVORS TELL THEIR STORIES OFTHE VALLEYS TRAGEDY
Brian Williams
It was the last day of school before the half-term holidays and Brian Williams was seven years old. He had just sat down for lessons in Pantglas. His older sister, June, was in a different part of the school and didn’t survive. She was 10.
“I got up and went to school as normal. I always went with my older sister, June, and her best friend from up the street, Pamela. We called into George’s sweet shop, as we always did every morning, and then my sister would go the one way to the top end of the school and my class was down the bottom end.
“We got into class with Mrs Williams, who was my teacher.
“There was a bit of a kerfuffle because everybody wanted to be in the Wendy house and I didn’t get to. So because I was having a bit of a strop, I got moved from my seat by the door.
“We were sitting there drawing and we could hear a noise coming. And the best way I could describe it later on – because I’d never heard anything like that at the time – was like when you go to an airport and you hear an aeroplane coming in to land.
“I stood and I watched because I thought ‘if something’s coming I want to see what’s coming’.
“I just watched the classroom wall split from the bottom to the top. The wall came through and stopped. And the next thing I remember was it went very quiet, and then a lot of screaming and crying.
“Then I saw Mr Williams (a different teacher) in the doorway. You could just about see his head from the gap of the door to where all the muck had come in.
“We were handed out one by one then to the caretaker. What you’ve got to remember with the caretaker here is he was getting us out and his two children had died further on up the school.
“Before I was handed out the window, I wanted to go back to try and get my coat because I thought ‘My mother’s gonna kill me if I haven’t got my coat with me’.
“We were told ‘get home as quick as you can’. But, of course, I knew as soon as I came out of the class that my sister was gone. You only had to look up the top end of the school and it was just... well, it wasn’t there basically.
“My mother said ‘Where’s your sister?’ I said ‘I don’t know’. I wasn’t going to say.
“I didn’t get involved in anything with regards to doing interviews, reunions, anything, until my mother and father were both gone. I couldn’t come out in an interview and say ‘Well I knew my sister was dead’.
“I never told them that, couldn’t. You can’t take away the hope. They had to find it out for themselves. They had to be told by someone, not by me.”
Brian is now the only member of the Ynysowen Male Choir who was in the school on October 21, 1966.
The choir was set up in the wake of the Aberfan disaster with the intention of raising money for charity as well as acting as a social activity for the local men, alongside women in the village attending The Aberfan Young Wives’ Club.
Philip Beynon
Teacher David Beynon, 47, was found in the wreckage of the school cradling five of his pupils. They were dead in his arms. His son, Philip, was 13 at the time. Now 63, he is speaking about his pride for his father publicly for the first time.
“My father must have heard the sound of the landslide coming towards the school. The children would have been frightened and perhaps ran towards him.
“Automatically he would put his arms around them but they were all buried under the force of that thing. All the kids in that class were killed, every single one of them, along with my dad.
“I“I was only 13 at the time but I was told they found my father with children wrapped in his arms. He was a devoted teacher and would have seen it as his job to protect the children in his care.
“He had been teaching in Merthyr but he wanted to be a headmaster so he took the job as deputy head in Aberfan as a step towards his ambition.
“I remember driving into the village with him before he started and someone saying if the coal tip behind the village ever came down it would hit the village school.
“He had only been working there for six weeks when that is exactly what happened. He dropped me at the grammar school in Merthyr that morning and that was the last time I saw him.
“One of my teachers drove me home – when I got there my mother was putting on her coat ready to go to Aberfan. Our TV was on the blink so I didn’t see what was being shown about the disaster which was a good thing.
“My mother came home at 2am the next morning and said my father was dead. She had spent all day th there hoping he would be fo found alive.
“He was a good father, a well-respected man. Th There were hundreds at his funeral. I remember th the front lawn at our house w was covered in wreaths.”
Yvonne Price
Yvonne Price, aged 21 at the time, was a police officer who was among the first members of the emergency services to reach the scene. She is now a divisional member in charge of the Trecynon division of St John Ambulance.
“I was on duty at nine o’clock at the old police station in Merthyr. It was a horrible day – nasty, low clouds, drizzly. I was already wearing my mac because I was going on an enquiry at 9.30.
“But the duty sergeant shouted that the tip had come down on the school in Aberfan and we had to get down there.
“I was rigid with shock and I should imagine the rest of them were as well. There were four of us in the car.
“To see this huge wall of water coming down – black water – and you could see doors, tables, kitchen utensils floating in it.
“We could see these people from the village passing saucepans and buckets full of debris.
“I was in civil defence and the guy in charge said ‘ Can you go through this hole in the ground for me as you’re the only one small enough to get through?’
“So, with my skirt on, I went through this hole in
Thh the ground as they said they thought there might be someone in there. I went in, terrified of enclosed spaces, but you do things like that in those situations.
“But there was nobody there and I came back out and my skirt must have been around my neck.
“The inspector said to me ‘If anyone asks you the hospital is in the classroom at the top of the schoolyard and the mortuary is in the chapel’. “I just laughed, I really thought he was joking. I couldn’t take it in.
“They started bringing the children out, passing them through the window on stretchers.
“Two things that I remember that really upset me that day. The one child – the last child we brought out alive – I remember that child was just whimpering like a dog whimpers when it’s hurt.
“I knew that if that child was whimpering like that it was because they didn’t have the strength to cry.
“The other thing – shortly after that they were bringing out the dead children. One of the miners was passing them through on the stretchers, he just looked at one child and passed them on and he just looked at me and said ‘That was my child’. And he just carried on working.
“I couldn’t believe the bravery of those people. It was amazing.
“The following day I went down again at nine in the morning and I was sent into the chapel, which was the mortuary.
“The mortician came up to me and said ‘ Can you tell me what colour this child’s eyes are?’ I went and I looked and I couldn’t really say – they could be blue, they could be brown.
“He said ‘You’ll do, you’re my assistant now.’
“Every time they’ve put Aberfan on the television or in the newspapers I’ve never watched it or read it. If I started to watch it I would burst into tears so in the end I didn’t bother at all because I knew I would just start crying.
“And I knew I couldn’t talk about it because I would burst into tears, and that was embarrassing. So I blocked it out.
“I didn’t go into Aberfan for about 43 years.”
Jeff Edwards
Jeff Edwards was eight at the time of the disaster. He was pulled out of the rubble after rescuers noticed his distinctive white hair. He went on to be an accountant and leader of Merthyr Tydfil council.
“It was a Friday so it was library book day. I’d fin-
ished the Janet and John reading scheme. Once you finished that series of books, you could go on to library books, kept on a shelf at the opposite side of the class. So from those books, I picked Herge’s Adventures of Tintin and I walked back to my desk.
“We put our books away then and the teacher started the first lesson, which I think was maths. As he was teaching there was this sort of rumbling sound and that progressively got louder and louder. And to reassure the class, he said ‘Don’t worry, it’s only thunder’. The lights that were suspended on long wires started to shake back and forth.
“The next thing I remember was waking up with all this material around me. Obviously, I didn’t know what had happened, other than the fact I was trapped. I could hear screams and shouts but I couldn’t move because the desk was up against my stomach, all the material from the roof had collapsed on top of me and there was a dead girl to the left of me.
“My right leg was stuck in a radiator and there was hot water coming out onto my leg.
“Somebody said ‘Look, there’s somebody down here’. My hair was very white, I was very blonde. The fireman who rescued me used his hatchet and broke the desk up and he pulled the stuff away. I was then lifted out and I was thrown in a human chain from one fireman to another, and to other people who had come to rescue.
“I was covered in a blanket and then carried out into Moy Road. By the time I got out, which was just after 11 o’clock, all the ambulances had gone. So I was taken to St Tydfil’s Hospital by Tom Harding, who was a fruiterer in the village.
“I remember his van, which was a light blue Bedford van, parked in the lane down from the school. He had difficulty starting the van because I think the water that was coming down had got up his exhaust. They had to push the van to start it off.
“I was shipped up then to St Tydfil’s Hospital and I had head injuries and stomach injuries. Those physical injuries would heal over time, but I think it’s the psychological injuries that would be with us right up until today. We won’t get rid of them, we’ll have to live with them. I think that’s the difficulty dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s a long-term thing.
“I couldn’t then return to the village because I was so frightened of the tip coming down again so I stayed with my gran up in Pentrebach until I felt confident enough to come back.
“We were reliving what happened to us in days, weeks and months after. I often had nightmares. That was something that our parents had to deal with because they’d never experienced that before. I was afraid of noise, I was afraid of crowds, I was afraid of going to school, and for many years I couldn’t go to school because I was afraid that something would happen”
Melvyn Walker
As an eight-year-old Melvyn Walker was in one of the classrooms which bore the brunt of the disaster. He was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, is currently receiving counselling and has never spoken about the disaster publicly before.
“We had just had registration and we could hear this rumbling noise. It sounded exactly like thunder. The teacher went to the window to investigate and that’s when it all came in. He was killed. It happened so quickly. One minute I was sat there and the next thing I knew I was covered in coal and sludge.
“My desk was in the middle of the classroom but I was pushed right across to where the hallway was. I was buried but managed to struggle free then I went to the window which divided the classroom from the hallway and I could see adults milling about.
“I was banging on the window but they seemed dazed and couldn’t respond. So I picked up a piece of wood and smashed the window.
“I remember pinching myself and wondering whether I was dreaming it. From the back of the classroom I remember hearing a girl shouting for help. I could see her arm sticking up so I went over and pulled her out.
“You could see a gaping hole in the roof and her and I escaped through this hole.
“I had to go over the top of what was left of the school to escape. I ran to the local shop where my sister was working. At that age I didn’t know what had happened – I thought a bomb had gone off or something.
“I couldn’t go to school for two years. Nobody knew. I used to head up to the mountainside in my uniform and sit there on my own all day. I missed so much school that I only passed one Olevel. I could never really hold a job down after that. I would say it has spoilt my life.
“I couldn’t really form relationships either because I would get anxiety attacks and flashbacks. “If I hear children’s voices it takes me straight back.”
ON October 21, 1966, the mining village of Aberfan was hit by a devastating tragedy.
On the Friday before half term, a waste tip from Merthyr Vale colliery slid down the mountain onto the village below, engulfing Pantglas Junior School and also destroying a farmhouse and several houses on Moy Road.
The rescue operation that followed was tremendous. Almost 2,000 people were involved. Miners dug with their shovels alongside desperate parents who dug with their bare hands. But no one was brought out alive from under the rubble after 11am.
The official death toll reached 144, of which 116 were children. The close ose knit community of Aberfan had lost a generation.on.
Aberfan filled newspapers locally, nationally and around the world. Stories of human bravery and toil, unimaginable suffering and heartache shocked and saddened the public.
The small village and its community – previously unknown outside South Wales – was suddenly at the centre of media attention from around the world. To this day, “Aberfan” is synonymous with the terrible disaster that shook the world.
Newspapers were key in providing information and shaped the way in which the public perceived the disaster and how many remember it.
National and local newspapers portrayed the tragedy and shock of the disaster by focusing their front pages on the dramatic figures of the confirmed dead, estimated death tolls, and suspected missing. Horrifying totals and estimations were reinforced with powerful pictures of the disaster scene. They used dramatic aerial shots of the disaster scene on their front pages, of the slurry engulfing the school, or the menacing tip creeping down the mountain side and dwarfing the tiny houses below it. Initial reporting on Friday, October 21 in the South Wales Echo said four children were recovered dead with 160 missing.
However, the next day’s reports portrayed far more staggering statistics.
Every newspaper detailed “Wales’ largest ever rescue operation”.
The language used to de describe the slide was impassioned and expressive: “It stood there with its guts ripped out like a great malevolent boil that had burst and spewed out its core over the town.”
The tip was personified, with The Mirror labelling it the “Finger of Death”.
The scene of the disaster was not only described visually, but atmospherically, with vivid descriptions such as: “The night buzzes with the roar of half a dozen mechanical excavators”. Eerie is the frequent description of the “silent halt”, in which the police whistled for silence in the hope of hearing survivors.
But then there was a dramatic shift in portrayal, from one of tragedy to scandal. “Why Were the Warnings Ignored?” the front page of The Sunday Mirror asked, exemplifying the inquiring and angry tone adopted by the press.
There was the revelation in the Sunday press that Pantglas headmistress, Ann Jennings, who was killed by the disaster, had handed a petition against the tip to Merthyr County Borough Council in 1965. The Daily Mirror reinforced the sense of scandal by publishing a picture of Miss Jennings with the caption: “The shattering evidence”.
The press vehemently attacked the authorities for allowing such a disaster to happen and demanded that a disaster of this kind should never happen again. The People surrounded its front page headline “The Sorrow and the Anger” with six pictures of the child victims, with the caption above reading: “They died at Aberfan... children on the nation’s conscience”.