Qualla: Aberfan Disaster

Aberfan Disaster: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Llywelyn2000 at Welsh Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. At a quarter past nine on the morning of 21 October 1966, the children of Pantglas Junior School in the village of Aberfan had just returned to their classrooms after singing 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' at assembly. They never finished their first lessons. Above the village, on the mountainside, a colliery spoil tip that the National Coal Board had built over a natural spring became saturated with days of heavy rain. It liquefied and slid downhill as a black slurry, engulfing the school and a row of houses in seconds. One hundred and sixteen children and twenty-eight adults died. Most of the children were between the ages of seven and ten.

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Image: Llywelyn2000 at Welsh Wikipedia | CC BY 3.0

Aberfan Disaster: A Disaster That Did Not Have to Happen

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tudor Williams, CC BY-SA 2.0. The tip that destroyed Pantglas Junior School was Tip Number 7, one of several waste tips the National Coal Board had created on the hillside above Aberfan to dispose of colliery spoil from the Merthyr Vale Colliery. The NCB knew the tips were built on waterlogged ground. Interna...

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Image: Tudor Williams | CC BY-SA 2.0

Aberfan Disaster: The Longest Morning

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Darren Wyn Rees at Aberdare Blog, CC BY-SA 4.0. Miners from the surrounding collieries were among the first to reach the school, digging with their hands and shovels through the black slurry. Parents arrived and dug alongside them, knowing their children were underneath. Rescue teams worked through the day and into the night u...

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Image: Darren Wyn Rees at Aberdare Blog | CC BY-SA 4.0

Aberfan Disaster: Blame Without Accountability

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit w:Ordnance Survey, Public domain. The official inquiry, led by Lord Justice Edmund Davies, found that the disaster was entirely the fault of the National Coal Board. The tribunal's report named nine NCB employees whose negligence contributed to the collapse and concluded that the organisation's management structu...

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Image: w:Ordnance Survey | Public domain

Aberfan Disaster: What Aberfan Remembers

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jaggery, CC BY-SA 2.0. The village rebuilt. A new school was constructed on higher ground. The memorial garden where Pantglas Junior School once stood is quiet and carefully tended, with long rows of identical white headstones marking the graves of the children who died together. Every year on 21 Octob...

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Image: Jaggery | CC BY-SA 2.0