Aberfan

Yes, I remember my mum crying at the News. I must have been 7, too.

It was a terrible tragedy.

I was a teenager and cried buckets. I remember watching the dreadful scenes of people desperately searching through the rubble and sludgy coal on our little black and white telly, yesterday I saw a survivor interviewed who was 15 and had left school, but his younger brother was in school that day and was handed his dead brothers body. I just don’t know how you move past that. So was crying buckets again. Back then my old mums eyes were red for days as she then spoke of the terrible tragedy with friends and neighbours. And even my old dad got something in his eye and a frog in his throat.

It affected me terribly as it affected the whole Nation. We wanted to dig out the children ourselves.

I remember my mum crying twice at news items, the assassination of President Kennedy and Aberfan, the sheer magnitude of all those dead children. It shouldn't have happened a terrible tragedy.

On GN the subject of Aberfan is synonymous with AnnieBach I think she mentioned she knew Aberfan well, I haven't seen her posting lately, I do hope she's ok.

I was a student at Training College, on teaching practice, and remember the Headteacher conducting a very moving assembly for the assembled infants. We were in shock that such a terrible thing could happen.

I remember it very well. I was in my mid-twenties, a tutor in a university hall of residence. I went into the Senior Common Room, and a Dutch girl there was obviously very upset. She had been listening to the radio. She didn’t speak very much English, and struggled to explain to me what had happened. It was a while before I fully grasped it. We didn’t have television, so it was only later that I saw footage of the tragedy.

I remember it well. We had a special assembly at school. The teachers were all upset. Quite scary for us children somehow. We then had a big fundraising drive to raise money to re equip the new school library in Aberfan.

I’d just turned 8 and I remember watching it on the news . So sad 💐

I remember being deeply saddened by the fact that this was not a natural disaster. It could have been avoided if proper precautions had been taken and the colliery spoil tip had not been sited on a hill, allowed to become over 100 feet high and built over a spring. Heavy rain was what finally caused the tip to slide down the hill onto the school below.

The television news items at the time included diagrams showing just how dangerous the tip was.

We have family in the valleys - it's where my father was born and grew up.
I saw this last night and wept buckets.
I do think about this terrible disaster quite a lot really.
It was actually talked about a lot when I was younger as the pain was terrible .

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m003375t/aberfan-the-village-that-fought-back

Here is a link to the programme I watched last night

I remember watching it on TV with my parents and my mother and I were weeping, my father angry because he said this should never have happened.

So many lives lost, so many people left grieving and so many heroes too, not all who survived.

It was a terrible tragedy. Thinking of those young children and the adults who died that day is very upsetting.

NotSpaghetti

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m003375t/aberfan-the-village-that-fought-back

Here is a link to the programme I watched last night

It’s terrible that they had to fight to prevent it happening again and to get funding for it. I haven’t watched it but heard a review about it and I’m trying to be brave enough to watch it.As always thoughts are with Annie whenever Aberfan is mentioned.

The recent programme is well worth watching. The most shocking thing was a document suggesting that parents should be quizzed on how attached they were to their child as the amount of compensation would then be based on that!

TerriBull

I remember my mum crying twice at news items, the assassination of President Kennedy and Aberfan, the sheer magnitude of all those dead children. It shouldn't have happened a terrible tragedy.

On GN the subject of Aberfan is synonymous with AnnieBach I think she mentioned she knew Aberfan well, I haven't seen her posting lately, I do hope she's ok.

I’ve not seen her posting either and Miss A is also not around.

I do hope that they are both ok

It is unbearable.

There was a minute’s silence when I was in Asda in Merthyr this morning, observed by everybody in a pretty busy supermarket. People won’t forget. The King, Queen, and Prince of Wales were all in Aberfan this morning.

I remember our neighbour running to our back door with tears streaming down her face, saying ‘the children, all the children’. That was the first my parents and I knew of it.

I too have been thinking about Anniebach all week as we neared the anniversary. I hope she is ok, and would like to send loving thoughts to her and all those she knew and loved. She has written so eloquently about it in the past, and kept it alive for all of us. She has made it so clear that those who were there would never forget, or forgive, and rightly so.

I am from the valleys and remember it well, although we were not living near then. The sadness lingers after all these years.

I would also like to add that the worst mining disaster in Wales was at Senghenydd in 1913. 439 miners and one rescuer were killed.

I’m re reading A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe which starts with the young embalmist travelling to Aberfan to help. A gruelling read portraying the situation but an excellent book and moves to tell the tale of the effect that it had on the young man for the rest of his life. Well worth a read.

The terrible thing about Aberfan was that the majority of the casualties were little children, I was 23 at the time, and I simply couldn't believe what I was seeing. It was truly awful. The late Queen didn't visit for eight days because she thought that she would hinder and get in the way of the rescue operation. Unfortunately that was a mis step that she deeply regretted.

This is my year in school. I remember our class teacher telling us about it.