What was the Aberfan disaster?
Aberfan #Aberfan
The Aberfan disaster took place 54 years ago today (Picture: Jim Gray/Getty Images)
Today marks 54 years since the Aberfan disaster which claimed the lives of 116 children and 28 adults.
Students of Pantglas Junior School had just sat down to their classes when a massive landslide demolished their school.
The catastrophe plagues the minds of people countrywide, and Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones said the disaster was ‘one of the darkest days in modern Welsh history’.
On October 21, 1966, at 9.15 am there was a landslide of a colliery spoil tip in the small village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales.
The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the village, and sat by a natural spring.
Queen Elizabeth II visited the Aberfan residents (Picture: Stan Meagher/Express/Getty Images)
After a period of heavy rain, the tip suddenly slid downhill as a slurry and demolished the primary school, killing five teachers and 109 students.
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People in neighbouring houses were also killed.
No one has ever been prosecuted for causing the accident.
An official inquiry was chaired by Lord Justice Edmund Davies, who placed the blame on National Coal Board (NCB), who did not make their knowledge of the water spring clear.
However, NCB vehemently denied any wrong-doing or liability, and neither the NCB nor any of its employees were charged.
Local people had to pay £150,000 for the clean-up bill out of what was meant to be a memorial fund, money which returned by the NCB in 1997 after decades of campaigning.
Survivors of the disaster are still impacted by the events to this day.
Jeff Edwards was eight years old at the time of the Aberfan disaster (Picture: Arthur Edwards – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Jeff Edwards, who was eight years old during the disaster, was pinned next to a dead girl from his class, with her head next to his face, for two hours.
On the 50th anniversary of the tragedy, Jeff told the Mirror: ‘What we’ve all experienced are classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
‘There’s no doubt it has affected me on a daily basis.
‘I still have nightmares and sometimes suffer from deep bouts of depression.’
MORE: The Crown season 3: What happened at the Aberfan disaster?
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