{"id":3804,"date":"2011-10-21T08:04:55","date_gmt":"2011-10-21T08:04:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=3804"},"modified":"2011-10-21T08:27:11","modified_gmt":"2011-10-21T08:27:11","slug":"remembering-the-aberfan-disaster-45-years-ago-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2011\/10\/21\/remembering-the-aberfan-disaster-45-years-ago-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the Aberfan disaster – 45 years ago today"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary: <\/strong>Today marks the 45 anniverasary of the Aberfan landslide disaster.\u00a0 In this post, Brett Cherry and I review the events of that day and consider the lessons that can be learnt from this the worst landslide disaster in UK history.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Remembering Aberfan<\/h1>\n

By Brett Cherry<\/a> and Dave Petley<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

International Landslide Centre<\/a> and Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience<\/a>, Durham University<\/span><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n

The story of the Aberfan disaster is seared into the memories of a generation of people in South Wales, and it remains a tragedy of huge proportions.\u00a0 Today, 45 years on from the disaster, there is much to learn from the events leading up to, and that occurred on, the day.\u00a0 In this article, we seek to explain the events that occurred in Aberfan on 21st<\/sup> October 1966, to review why the disaster occurred, and to examine the aftermath.\u00a0 Finally, we briefly examine the legacy that this disaster has left in many spheres of life.<\/p>\n

Story of the Aberfan disaster<\/strong><\/p>\n

Prior to the disaster, Aberfan was just another small, Welsh coal mining village, located in the valleys of South Wales. \u00a0Essentially the reason for the existence of the village lay in coal mining \u2013 it was founded shortly after the first excavations for the Merthyr Vale colliery in 1869.\u00a0 The village was formed primarily of a close knit community of miners and their families, but was sufficiently large to be able to sustain both a primary and a secondary school.\u00a0 Pictures from the post-War period show that the hills above the village were dominated by a series of enormous spoil heaps.\u00a0 Dealing with the waste is a perennial problem in coal mining, which often generates large volumes of dirty material that has little economic use.\u00a0 In South Wales, as elsewhere, it was common to pile the waste close to the mine workings \u2013 in the case of Aberfan on the slopes above the village.<\/p>\n

Mining at Aberfan started in 1869; initially the waste was dumped in tips on the slope adjacent to the mine.\u00a0 However, as the volume of material increased, new tips were built on the slopes higher up the hiollside.\u00a0 By 1969, seven tips had been constructed.\u00a0 Tip 7, from which the disastrous landslide developed, was started in 1958, and reached a height of about 40 metres.\u00a0 It contained about 230,000 m3<\/sup> of waste.\u00a0 The material was transported to the tip on trams that were hauled up an incline by a series of motors, before the waste was dumped on the tip by a crane.<\/p>\n

The Commission of Enquiry noted that when coal waste tips are concerned, \u201cwater is undoubtedly the root cause of most failures\u201d.\u00a0 This was not a new finding \u2013 indeed it had been known for at least 40 years \u2013 and 45 years on it is still the case.\u00a0 This area of South Wales has a wet climate (average rainfall is about 1500 mm per year), and the hillsides are marked by lines of springs.\u00a0 The presence of these springs on the hillslopes above was noted on Ordnance Survey maps dating from the late 19th<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 Remarkably, some older tips at Aberfan built on springs or watercourses had previously failed \u2013 for example, Tip 4 slipped in 1944, and Tip 5 had a large bulge that was considered to be an indication that it was unstable.\u00a0 Furthermore, just down the valley\u00a0 of Abercynon, a landslide developed in a tip in 1939 that buried a road to a depth of nearly seven metres.\u00a0 And so, the arguments that the events at Aberfan were unprecedented, or could not have been anticipated, cannot be sustained.<\/p>\n

In the years leading up to the landslide, water from the hillside had been a perennial problem for the people of Aberfan.\u00a0 Starting in 1949, and possibly earlier, a series of floods had affected the upper part of the town, causing damage and disruption, and leaving a legacy of a \u201cslimy black deposit\u201d in its wake, which was almost certainly mine waste.\u00a0 The people of the town repeatedly wrote to the Council and the National Coal Board asking for this problem to be addressed to no effect; it is ironic that in the aftermath of this disaster this flooding issue was solved through the construction of a simple culvert.<\/p>\n

The disaster itself occurred on 21st<\/sup> October 1966 at about 9:15 am.\u00a0 The day was calm and sunny at 7:30 am, when the team of men responsible for the dumping of mine waste on Tip 7 arrived for work.\u00a0 At the top of tip 7 they found that \u00a0it had subsided by about three metres.\u00a0 The team had to send a messenger down to report this information to the mine managers as the telephone was out of action as a result of the repeated theft of the cable.\u00a0 A decision was taken by the mine managers to cease tipping at that location, and an additional team was sent up to move the tipping infrastructure back from the area of active movement.\u00a0 By the time they reached the top, the subsidence had further developed, with another three metres of movement being reported.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The final, catastrophic collapse developed apparently spontaneously as an initially-rotational movement that rapidly transitioned into a flow.\u00a0 About 107,000 cubic metres of material flowed down the hillside and into the village.\u00a0 Descriptions of the event from eye-witnesses bring home the suddenness and catastrophic nature of the landslide.\u00a0 Most witnesses report a noise that sounded like a jet plane passing low over the village; the witnesses also describe a wave of debris, higher than a house, moving fast and demolishing houses \u201clike a pile of dominoes\u201d.\u00a0 The landslide behaved like a liquid, but with twice the density of water, sufficient to demolish everything in its path. \u00a0Some victims who escaped the main flow were struck and injured by flying debris.<\/p>\n

By the time the landslide stopped, it had demolished Pantglas Junior School and 18 houses, and had seriously damaged the secondary school and many more houses.\u00a0 A total of 144 people were killed, including 116 children.\u00a0 Of these, 109 children, mostly aged between seven and ten years old, were killed in the primary school, together with five of their teachers.\u00a0 It is a mercy that lessons in the secondary school did not start until 9:30, meaning that many of those children were still walking towards the building at the time of the landslide.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The eye-witnesses report that when the landslide stopped there was complete silence: for example a local hairdresser who witnessed the landslide reported that \u201cIn that silence you couldn\u2019t hear a bird or a child\u201d.<\/p>\n

Immediately people flooded into the area from far and wide to try to save the victims buried by the landslide, including miners from the colliery.\u00a0 News footage from that day shows numerous pit workers in their colliery helmets digging at the site of the school (this footage can be seen here – it is extraordinary bur very moving to view<\/a>).\u00a0 However, conditions were exceptionally difficult \u2013 the landslide mass had drained almost as soon as movement ceased, leaving a dense, cohesive mass that was difficult to excavate.\u00a0 At the school site there was little room to manoeuvre.\u00a0 The last living victim was extracted before 11 am, less than two hours after the landslide.<\/p>\n

The aftermath of the disaster<\/strong><\/p>\n

Immediately following the disaster a Tribunal was appointed to investigate the events leading up to the disaster at Aberfan.\u00a0 The Tribunal found that the National Coal Board was entirely responsible for failing to act to prevent the disaster.\u00a0 Throughout most of the proceedings of the Tribunal, the National Coal Board sought to deny responsibility, but by the end of the proceedings the report notes that \u201chowever belatedly, it was conceded by the National Coal Board that the Aberfan Disaster stemmed from their failure to initiate any policy with respect to the siting, control, inspection and management of tips\u201d.\u00a0 The NCB was found to be at fault by the Tribunal for placing a tip on a site that had not been properly investigated.\u00a0 Evidence brought forward by residents of Aberfan revealed that the spring underneath Tip 7 was far from \u2018unknown\u2019 as originally claimed by Chair of the NCB, Lord Alfred Robens.\u00a0 The worker who reported the first sinking of Tip 7 on the day of the disaster told the judge of the Tribunal, Lord Justice Edmund Davies, that \u201cno one walking on the mountain before Tip 7 was started could fail to see the stream and the spring\u201d, nor did they require any surveying or engineering expertise to see that the site was unsuitable for the tip in the first place.<\/p>\n

The Tribunal named nine members of the board as being directly responsible for the event, and specified in some detail how their actions led to the catastrophe.\u00a0 However, perhaps surprisingly when seen from the perspective of modern times, no-one was prosecuted for causing the deaths of the 144 people and for the physical and social ruin of the community of Aberfan.\u00a0 According to a 2000 report funded by the ESRC on the government response to the disaster, senior officials of the NCB were not prosecuted because UK governments of the late 1960s and early 1970s \u201cneeded their help in the ‘high politics’ of running down the coal industry without provoking a national strike\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Since the NCB was treated as if it were a government department, making them pay the environmental or direct costs of the disaster was considered to be unwise as it would have increased the governmental deficit, which would then have to be recovered from general taxation.\u00a0 Furthermore, the report suggests that the interests of the people of Aberfan simply did not have any sway over policymakers and according to laws in place at the time relating to corporate negligence, no regulatory offence was committed during the Aberfan Disaster because no miners were killed.\u00a0 After the disaster, a fund was created that attracted donations of \u00a31,750,000 (equivalent to about \u00a330 million today), with money being received in the form of more than 90,000 contributions from over 40 countries.\u00a0 This fund distributed the money in a number of ways, including direct payments to the bereaved, the construction of a memorial, repairs to houses, respite breaks for villagers and the construction of a community centre.\u00a0 However, the fund itself attracted considerable controversy.\u00a0 First, when the fund was created it did not include any representatives from Aberfan itself; subsequently, after protests from the villagers, five places through democratic election were created.\u00a0 Remarkably, no other members of the disaster fund were elected democratically.\u00a0 Second, in the aftermath of the disaster the NCB and the Treasury refused to accept full liability, and thus to fund the removal of tips that still loomed above the village.\u00a0 Lord Robens claimed that it was too expensive to remove the tips, with an estimated cost of \u00a33 million pounds.\u00a0 In response, the community of Aberfan formed a Tip Removal Committee to actively seek out contractors for estimates to remove the tips.\u00a0 Eventually the tips were removed by the NCB, but using \u00a3150,000 that Lord Robens appropriated from the disaster fund.\u00a0 Understandably, this caused long-term resentment in the community.\u00a0 In 1997, this sum (but without interest) was repaid to the fund by the UK government.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Legacy of Aberfan<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The village of Aberfan continues to be profoundly affected by the disaster in 1966, despite the change in population that accompanied the closure of the colliery.\u00a0 According to a psychiatric study that undertook a follow-up of the disaster in 2003, many people who lived through the Aberfan disaster continue to suffer regular bouts of post-traumatic stress.\u00a0 However, the majority of survivors refused to participate in the study.\u00a0 In common with observations with large-scale disasters in other locations, soon after the landslide the birth rate of Aberfan and Merthyr Vale increased dramatically, such that by 1972 it has been calculated that more additional children had been born than had been lost in the tragedy.\u00a0 This is a phenomenon known as biosocial regeneration, which is a subconscious response primarily by couples who had not lost a child in the disaster.<\/p>\n

The Aberfan Disaster also led to detailed studies of the behaviour of mine waste, and in particular of their potential to undergo apparently spontaneous catastrophic collapse.\u00a0 Research into this mechanism continues today, but sadly mine waste failures remain common, especially in less developed countries.\u00a0 For example, in September 2008 a mine waste landslide struck the village of Taoshi in the Shaanxi province of China, killing at least 128 villagers.\u00a0 Of course, in the UK the disaster led to major changes to the ways in which mine wastes are managed, and there has been no repeat of this dreadful accident.\u00a0 Since the accident, coal spoil tips have been treated as engineering structures requiring proper design and maintenance.\u00a0 A Derelict Land Unit was setup in Cardiff not long after the disaster to restore brownfield land, including former sites of collieries and land used by the coal industry.\u00a0 New ways to dispose of colliery spoils have also been developed.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

The dreadful calamity of the Aberfan landslide disaster remains perhaps the most poignant and memorable disaster in the UK since the Second World War.\u00a0 The combination of a failure of responsibility by the relevant authorities, the dreadful events in the moment of the landslide, the heroic but mostly futile rescue attempts, and the appalling behaviour of some parties in the aftermath of the disaster created an extraordinary mix from which there is much to learn.\u00a0 There are some positive legacies of the disaster, most notably the dramatic improvements to the management of mine wastes, but there is still much to do to ensure that these lessons are learnt internationally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today marks the 45 anniverasary of the Aberfan landslide disaster. In this post, Brett Cherry and I review the events of that day and consider the lessons that can be learnt from this the worst landslide disaster in UK history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":3807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[469,959,205,133,575],"class_list":["post-3804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-mining","tag-uk","tag-wales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}