Arsonist torched Queen’s organ gift to Aberfan
AN arsonist was jailed yesterday for destroying a historic chapel along with the £40,000 memorial organ donated by the Queen after the Aberfan disaster in which more than 100 children died.
Daniel Brown started the blaze for a ‘kick’, using his keys as a volunteer cleaner to get into the chapel which had been used as a mortuary after the tragedy at the Welsh mining village 50 years ago.
A total of 144 people – 116 children aged seven to ten and 28 adults – died when a coal waste tip slid down the mountainside, engulfing Pantglas Junior School and around 20 houses on October 21, 1966, a Friday.
The devastated community was presented with the organ after the Queen
‘It meant a lot to many people’
visited Aberfan ten days later. Yesterday relatives of the dead said Brown’s crime was ‘ beyond belief’ and called for the burnt-out church to be torn down.
Iris Minett, 80, who lost her son Carl, seven, and daughter Maralyn, ten, in the tragedy, said: ‘The chapel meant a lot to many people but now it will never be the same. I hope they pull it down.
‘We have been through so much here that it is beyond belief that someone could have done this.’
The fire last summer caused more than £500,000 worth of damage to the chapel which was built in 1876. Brown, 27, a serial arsonist, was given a ten-year extended sentence for public protection at Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court – a five-year custodial term and a five-year extended licence.
Mrs Minett’s daughter Gaynor was eight when she was pulled out of the school alive, but with two broken legs.
Yesterday she said: ‘No amount of time in prison will make up for the emotional damage caused by what he did to the chapel. Nothing can bring back the pews where those children were laid to rest.
‘It is now a scar on the village and is standing like a monstrosity. It is the 50th anniversary this year. I don’t want that standing as another reminder of something that has gone wrong.’
Brown, of Nixonville, Merthyr Vale, admitted arson, being reckless as to whether life was endangered, and two further counts of arson. The court heard he had developed a taste for arson after setting fire to his own home aged nine. He told police he got a kick out of seeing the emergency services arrive.
Jailing him, Judge Richard Twomlow said: ‘It was a building that was priceless to the community and there was understandable outrage and grief. An important part of the history of Aberfan has been irre- trievably lost.’ The Aberfan disaster happened at around 9.15am when more than 40,000 cubic metres of debris covered the village in minutes.
Around half of the school’s children and five teachers died.
A few minutes earlier the children would not have been in their classrooms. A few hours later, the school would have broken up for half-term.