The Aberfan Tip Disaster

The Aberfan Tip disaster happened in the small town of Merthyr Tydfil, in Southern Wales. Merthyr Tydfil was a small coal-mining town and the coal mining company, the Merthyr Vale Colliery, had built up several coal tips on a large, steep hillside.

            On October twenty first, nineteen sixty six, at nine fifteen a.m. coal tip number seven came rushing down the Aberfan hillside and took out the Pantglas Elementary School along with twenty nearby houses. The landslide killed 144 people that day, 116 of which were school children; half of all of the children at Pantglas Elementary and five of their teachers were buried under huge amounts of black mud. Police received an emergency call at nine twenty five a.m.: “I have been asked to inform that there has been a landslide at Pantglas. The tip has come down on the school.”

           

      The remains of the school and houses covered with mud

The tip was placed on top of an underground spring, which made the ground unstable; that along with two days of non-stop rainfall caused the coal tip to slide down the slope of the hillside.

This was a terrible thing that happened but it could have been prevented. I feel that not placing so much coal on top of the hill or monitoring the tips, as slower landslides had happened before on different tips, could have prevented this.

Sources that I used

First one I looked at

http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/aberfandisaster.htm

Final one I used

http://www.southwalespolicemuseum.org.uk/en/content/cms/history_of_the_force/the_aberfan_disaster/the_aberfan_disaster.aspx