FT273


Aberfan is a small village in South Wales. In the 1960s, many of those living there worked at a nearby colliery that had been built to exploit the large amount of high quality coal in the area. Much of the waste from the mining operation had been piled on the steep hillsides surrounding the vill­age, and throughout October 1966 heavy rain lashed down on the area and seeped into the porous sandstone of the hills. No one realised that the water was then flowing into several hidden springs and slowly transforming the pit waste into soft slurry.

Just after nine o’clock on 21 October, the side of the hill subsided and half a million tons of debris started to rapidly move towards the village.