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  • in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9263
    xileffilex
    Participant

    Rapoport – safe pair of hands.
    Here’s one of the haulage companies from Barry involved – well, the tippers don’t contain any waste in the photo above:

    The Leyland comes from Vaynor Quarries in Merthyr
    http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/vaynorquarries.htm

    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9255
    xileffilex
    Participant

    Some photos from above an around the school:

    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9252
    xileffilex
    Participant

    What became of Mair Jones? Apart from the 1986 interview ,held by Swansea University, hardly anything survives.
    Three years later, a new school with a new name opened
    http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19690804&id=XtxVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8uADAAAAIBAJ&pg=4314,880540
    Ynysowen Infants and Junior School, with 90 survivors from Pantglass and 310 other pupils approximately.

    They don’t talk about it much now” said Tudor Evans, the headmaster. Miss Mair Jones, headmistress of the infants school, said that in helping the children recover from shock “The only psychology we used was to let them talk about it without our bursting into tears. If they felt sad and wanted to cry, we understood.”

    Mrs Beryl Williams….said that few families had moved away… [her] son Keith was 9 years old when he died in the avalanche..her daughter Ann, 8, is a pupil at the new school….

    …Arguments over the use and division of the [£4.8 million Aberfan disaster fund]

    money caused such discord in the village that many said that the fund had been a disaster in the village in itself. Most of the dissention has ended now. Geoffrey Morgan, a 31 year old accountant who is permanent secretary of the fund, said the major outlay had been $14,000 <span style=”color: red;”> [exchange rate 2.8 ie.GBP 5000]</span> grants to each of 107 families. Other grants have gone for cemetery markers, home repairs and disabled children. The fund will also bear part of the expense of removing the remaining tips.

    I am astonished that Mair Jones just disappears withut trace.

    Of the adults who are reported to have died, in their 20s and over, I counted 10 who were the subject of probate.
    Margaretta Bates of Nelson, agd 35 , probate to David Alvin Bates, schoolmaster GBP4167
    David Beynon Deputy head aged 47 GBP4636
    Gwyneth Collins, aged 34, 78 Moy Road, 34 GBP1583 to John Collins Engineering Inspector
    Marjorie Christine Evans, aged 26, 6 Moy Road GBP1061 to James Arnold Evans, Quality Engineer
    Frederick Richard Hanson,aged 78, 79 Moy Road, GBP3995 to Derek Jones, Grocer and Gaynor Jones
    Brian Elvet Harris,aged 24, 84 Moy Road, GBP4199 to Janet Harris.
    Glenys Gabriel Jones, aged 46 of 79 Moy Road probate as Hanson above.
    Catherine Jane Jones, aged 75, of 83 Moy Road, GBP4837 to Margaret Dilys Brunt
    Marjorie Ann Rees aged 22 [teacher] of Nelson GBP1692 to Thomas Clive Rees, solr.
    Nancy ,aka Annie Wiliams, aka Nansi O’Brien [sic] of 17 Pleasant View aged 44, GBP2172 to David Robert Williams, Lamp Room colliery foreman.

    in reply to: The 1988 Clapham Rail crash #9239
    xileffilex
    Participant

    An American online capture from 1988:
    http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2457&dat=19881213&id=aqhJAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Lw4NAAAAIBAJ&pg=2450,4460103

    “It is sheer bloody hell,that’s what it is” – Jim McMillan [see above video] Some bodies were so badly dismembered that limbs were placed in separate body bags,adding to confusion about the toll said John Norris, a Fire Brigade divisional officer.

    Wooooowww!

    Police inspector Barry Webb said some limbs were unaccounted for and therefore the toll could rise

    Whaaaat??

    34 people died in the crash and two later at a hospital

    [nice and vague]

    p3

    hurling bodies onto the tracks as the cars “split open like a ripe tomato”

    http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19881212&id=5gJOAAAAIBAJ&sjid=JIwDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6204,2187747

    A spokeswoman for the ambulance service requesting anonymity, [strange thing to do – why, pray? Isn’t that her job?] said 42 bodies were accounted for and “we are expecting to find more bodies”. She said 115 passengers were hosptalised, 30 with serious injuries and others were treated where they lay on the ground and in the wreckage. Other ambulance service spokesmen said some people had to have limbs amputated to extricate them from the wreckage. Brtish Transport Police said….53 people died in the crash but ambulance spokesmen and fire officials at the scene could not confirm the transport police figure. Lou Gill the Fire Brigade’s divisional officer said all survivors had been removed about 5 hours after the crash but feared that when the mangled wreckage was finally cleared, “there may be further bodies underneath”.
    Transport Police spokesman Jim Rowe said at the scene that about 1,500 people were aboard the 20 passenger carriages involved.
    “We were going pretty fast, about 70 miles an hour” said Greg Ford, 28 who was on the passenger train [i.e. the moving one….] “It went bang and that was it.We were all over the place”
    Roy Daniel,37, was in the buffet car when “the train startd stopping and we started falling over each other. [started stopping from 40 or 70]mph??? ] “we came to a stop and the (buffet) counter was sort of lodged on top of us. That saved us” [unlike, presumably everybody else in the buffet car who was not under the counter….]
    Chris Reeves, 38, of Southampton was also in the buffet car.He said he saw “furniture and big lumps of metal flying everywhere. The whole of the buffet car disintegrated” Reeves said, “and the roof split open like a ripe tomato and that’s how we got out. We tried to find people underneath the rubble but there was so much debris there was nothing we could do”
    A child’s stroller lay atop one carriage [how did it get there??]
    “Bodies were ripped apart and the trains were tangled together ” said firefigher Chris Fitzgerald. “There were pieces of bodies lying all over the place. You could hear people moaning” said Webb of the Ambulance service.

    Is this a train or a building being demolished?
    It is starting to sound like a drill.

    The injured were ferried to five hospitals in a fleet of 20 ambulances. Emmanuel [sic] High School near the scene of the crash was used as a makeshift clinic. Boys from the school scrambled down the banks to help rescue survivors….Alec Jackson, a school official said “I was in my office here, 100 yards from the line. There was just an enormous explosion, like a bomb, then smoke, thick black smog, then absolute mayhem” He said scores of passengers arrived at the school bleeding, dazed and missing teeth.

    No doubt dentists were also on hand in the school’s emergency clinic.
    This is just too crazy for words. Black smog, explosions….

    Finally

    British Rail will pay about$18,000 in immediate compensation to relatives of the 34 people killed…..officials said yesterday

    http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1129&dat=19890106&id=sZ5RAAAAIBAJ&sjid=2G0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=1070,1537518
    dated January 6 1989


    Jim McMillan receives a BBC “Heart of Gold”, 31 December 1988 on behalf of the emergency services. All wonderful.With Esther Rantzen.

    in reply to: The 1988 Clapham Rail crash #9234
    xileffilex
    Participant

    On the face of it, Tom, the position of the carriage up the bank would seem not to fit in with the laws of Physics. We don’t know what date the pictures were taken, or how long it took for the site to be cleared. It would certainly be an odd place to lift the carriage to by crane in the clear-up.
    A few more images:



    One year later, Stewarts Lane Depot, SW8

    This is an interesting one, with the comment:

    Amazing how the saloon of this vehicle survived unscathed!!

    This must be the rear end of the Basingstoke train, 4-VEP # 4033 There is no concertina-ing visible at all.
    For reference, this is what Network SE liveried 4-VEP stock looks like – to see what is missing – and it must be a 4-VEP up the bank, and….there can only be one wrecked end to a 4-VEP due to a head-on; we are not told about the damage, if any, to the third train, also composed of 4-VEP stock.

    in reply to: The 1988 Clapham Rail crash #9227
    xileffilex
    Participant

    and some more…

    It’s clear that the carriages in the middle of the sandwich are not suburban slam-door stock. [3x] Class 423 4-VEP stock made up the first Basingstoke train; the following Bournemouth express running late was said to have been made up of one 4-REP [unit # 2003, ex-3003] and two 4TC cars[again 12 carriages] . The empty carraige working westbound was composed again of 2x four-car 4VEP slam door units.

    4TC stock had only a few doors per carriage, being converted from Intercity stock, with a driving cab at each end of the quartet of coaches.


    source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/camperdown/8483147748/
    4-REP motor set from Flickr: the motor cars would propel the bogie 4TC cars to Bournemouth, or pull the unpowered cars to London.

    in reply to: The 1988 Clapham Rail crash #9226
    xileffilex
    Participant

    More wreckage pictures…


    source: http://www.collectionspicturelibrary.co.uk/select.php?kwrd=Clapham%20Junction&ptag=1
    The last photo is interesting, since it seems to show a carriage shunted away from the camera up the embankment.

    More ambulances – blogged by a more recent local resident who identifies the viewpoint as the roof of the Roundhouse PH [see above….]
    http://mushypeasontoast.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/whats-on-your-doorstep.html

    in reply to: The 1988 Clapham Rail crash #9225
    xileffilex
    Participant

    “In excess of 30 bodies retrieved and there are more to come out” Chief Fire Officer Jim McMillan in answer to a conflict about the estimates of the number of dead, viz 32 and 53.

    Lockerbie came 9 days later…

    in reply to: The 1988 Clapham Rail crash #9216
    xileffilex
    Participant

    We are near carriage sidings here at Clapham Junction. I wonder if you could create a crash by reversing a train into another. If one train runs into another, one tends to get concertinad coaches in a head on smash.
    The Wiki page is less than useless, being based just on the Hidden report.
    The Salvation Army tea wagon is a huge clue. So often encountered at drills.
    THe photo also makes no sense – the third train involved was empty stock running south on the adjacent (school side) line. I would assumed therefore the first driving coach would be slewed off the track in th direction of the school with severe frontal damage.In the photo above the front coach has slewed off the down line, but looks undamaged.
    Further problems:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/december/12/newsid_2547000/2547561.stm

    A third empty train later ran into the wreckage killing some passengers who had survived the first crash.

    How do they know that?
    The coaches on the left must belong to the empty stock train:

    We still haven’t located the alleged teacher Mr Cannon, have we? However, by a strange coincidence,

    The Transport Secretary Paul Cannon is understood to be on his way to the scene of the tragedy.

    but it was Paul Channon

    Emergency services have said the extent of the injuries mean some passengers have received operations at the scene.

    What are they all doing on the roof?

    The trains involved at Clapham were of the old, Mark 1 slam-door variety, which are known to be less able to withstand a crash than more modern carriages.

    Members of the House of Commons Transport Committee this week expressed concerns about the safety of Mark 1 stock.

    Yet as many as 2,300 of these carriages remain in use – mainly on commuter routes in the south-east.

    1998 – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/233576.stm
    The Christopher Wain audio link [R5 live Dec 12 1998] still works – he says the train which ploughed into the Bournemouth train was from Reading! Impossible – and compounds the false story by saying the third train only “sheer good luck” prevented the third train ploughing into the wreckage rather than killing more people. Perhaps this is a genuine case of sloppy journalism 10 years after?
    Wain was BBC transport correspondent from 1987 onwards until 1999

    Must look for more images. The supply is surprisingly thin.

    There’s some 1988 [2.30 mins approx] footage here from ITV, available to academic subscribers:
    http://jiscmediahub.ac.uk/record/display/039-00015397;jsessionid=4B7C19F8F75054A2D8C68C274D945104

    Some ITV clips here, but I can’t get them to work
    http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist/ITN/2008/12/12/T12120835/?v=1

    in reply to: The 1988 Clapham Rail crash #9214
    xileffilex
    Participant

    Of course, you’d have needed to pay a child fare for a mobile phone on a bus in those days…but would you jump off a bus if you heard a bang and be late for work? The 77 bus passed along Earlsfield Road, to the west side of the cutting where the memorial is now. That would be the 8.12 999call, then? I can’t imagine Ms Tolson, then aged 25, knowing the local cop shop number at 8.10. The bus would have been crowded. What did she do then or witness below the railings ? We are not told.

    http://uk.linkedin.com/in/lisbetsherlock

    Just wonder why they would identify a 999 caller when there would have been lots of them, probably very close together?? Quite an unusual thing to do. One which does stand out is the call made by a Stephen Pullen at the Daily Express about his colleague finding the body of Roberto Calvi hanging under Blackfriars Bridge (allegedly as we must always say nowadays, because we cannot believe anything we read in the press). One for another day…
    I’ve not finished yet – time to look at what some of the Clapham survivors said years later and examine the list of the dead.
    I just wish that one day, when examining a significant event, the news stories all seem normal. It can’t be “sloppy journalism” every time, can it? In any case this sub-species, the “journo” just writes down unquestioningly whatever their police/security/political “sources” tell them to.

    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9185
    xileffilex
    Participant

    One of the teachers, Miss Hetty Taylor was interviewed in 2006, aged 63:
    http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/reliving-horror-40-years-2307449
    19 October 2006

    Hetty Williams was 23 in 1966. She taught Standard One, a class of seven and eight year-olds, travelling across to Aberfan with Michael Davies, another young teacher who lived in Princetown.
    I’d come in with Michael that morning, we had all been standing in the hallway talking with Hywel Williams, who also taught there, about a staff do at Bindles in Barry the following day.

    ‘Then when the disaster happened, it all changed.

    ‘The walls of my classroom were bulging and cracking, Hywel helped me get the children out, but then while we were standing on the playground, I was asked to come and identify a body.

    ‘They thought it might have been a senior school pupil who had got caught up in the landslide. It was a young man wearing a blazer and flannels so they thought it was a pupil. But it was Michael Davis.’
    Her friend and former colleague Rennie Williams, now aged 73, remembers the day.
    ‘My room was right next to the hall,’ she explained. ‘We were just taking the register and carrying on like normal. Then I heard a terrible noise I thought must be the caretaker moving furniture around in the hall. Of course, it wasn’t.
    ‘Some of my children were injured by bricks and debris because they were in the hall paying their dinner money. But we managed to bring them out of the school safely and into the playground.
    ‘Even after we got our children to safety and sent them home, we had to stay. The doctors asked us to help identify the casualties.’
    Both of the women stayed in teaching. Hetty, now aged 63 and living in Princetown, said: ‘They asked us if we wanted to move, but we said we should stay for the children’s sake. I kept teaching, and moved over to the Rhymney valley after my daughter was born. She is named after two of the girls I taught, Julie and Lynne.
    ‘I worked in at Abertysswg, Phillipstown and Bargoed, teaching children of the same age.’
    Rennie stayed in the Merthyr area and never lost her love of teaching. She said: ‘I just like working with the children.’
    See the special supplement in today’s Express for more on the 40th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster.

    So, that would be Mrs R.L.Williams who was interviewed by Swansea University in 1986.
    Scroll down here
    http://tvguide.lastown.com/bbc/preview/real-lives-reunited/episode-1.html
    for a transcript of the above radio programmee, 29 minutes.

    From the Western Mail 10 May 2007:
    http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Queen+meets+Aberfan+survivors.-a0163182589

    It was the Queen’s third visit to Aberfan. She paid her respects just eight days after the disaster and returned to open the yellow-brick community centre in 1973.
    “The Queen asked to meet survivors and bereaved people, so I set about contacting as many as I could,” said Cliff Minett, chairman of the Aberfan Memorial Committee, who lost his son Carl, seven, and 10-year-old daughter Marylyn in the disaster.
    Some were in hospital when the Queen first came here and others were just too upset to meet her.
    Former PE teacher Howell Williams, 56, survived when children around him perished.

    Would a junior school have had a PE teacher? Perhaps.

    Unrelated – musician Thomas Fredrick Willetts:

    his passion for his community was evident when on 21 October 1966 he was one of the first on the first on the scene, assisting in counselling family members from the Aberfan Disaster. Musicians from the church played under his direction at the funeral of those who perished in the disaster attended by Queen Elizabeth II. In 1973 Fred created the Aberfan Festival in memory of those who had passed away and who had suffered the tragic events of 1966. Fred sadly passed away in 2007.

    National archives:
    http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/s/res?_q=ABERFAN

    Short 1:48 clip from BBC Timewatch 1996
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0127wss
    “the blond haired boy photo-op” – Jeff Edwards from 0:45 onwards, followed by interesting footage showing digging inside the school.
    2:32 clip here with interviews with Jeff Edwards, Susan Robertson, another photo-op child with policeman from 1966. Unnfortunately the rest of the programme is not available, which is a shame, because PE teacher Howell Williams is interviewed, along with Gaynor Minett and others.

    in reply to: The 1988 Clapham Rail crash #9182
    xileffilex
    Participant

    thanks, Tom – that bandaging is of “drill” quality. I think the school did indeed house a temporary mortuary…need to read the official report [link above] I’d love to see how all these intrepid pupils and masters just jumped down onto the tracks. I fail to see how Mr Cannon got involved here:
    https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=emanuel+school+sw11&ll=51.459176,-0.173236&spn=0.001286,0.001725&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&channel=sb&t=h&z=19&layer=c&cbll=51.459127,-0.173372&panoid=mdEu3fKRWUh74j9XwRXq7w&cbp=12,176.15,,0,0
    That’s the whole point, in the UK, the rail companies don’t want people being able to jump onto tracks in deep cuttings and get electrocuted.

    “A temporary mortuary was established at an early stage”

    p53 ff is quite interesting – the first call to the police wasn’t a 999! No urgency there, a bit like a stolen bike. Made at 8.10, followed by 999 at 8.12… traffic diversions established – to keep the public away in reality. The first police officers on scene – post 8.17Am – escorted the wounded to Emanuel School That must have been an effort getting them up the banks over railings, etc. etc.

    I
    Metropolitan Police Officers’ duties were then directed to: –
    traffic control
    -supervision of the casualty centre at Emanuel School
    – supervision of the casualty collection point at Spencer Park
    – establishing hospital liaison teams of officers to record details of casualties arriving at the hospitals
    – setting up and control of the temporary mortuary
    – establishing the casualty bureau.

    At thecasualty centres at Spencer Park, Emanuel School and the Roundhouse public house, the walking wounded were cared for and their names and addresses taken.
    Police officers at the hospitals took details of those arriving and the severity of their injuries.
    A temporary mortuary was established at an early stage and details and descriptions of the deceased recorded

    We are not told where the mortuary was.

    One boy Terry Stoppani was celebrating his 12th birthday and was small enough to crawl into the wreckage and pull people out.

    and from the report, p.56, para 5.55

    visited the British Transport Police incident room on 9January 1989 and saw the detailed and difficult work which was necessary in order to seek to identify where passengers had been sitting or standing
    at the time of the accident. I am deeply grateful to Superintendent Stoppani to Detective Chief Inspector Taylor and the rest of the rest of their team in the incident room for that work and all the help to the court in this investigation…..

    Clearly a common South London name.

    Shades of 7/7

    in reply to: The 1988 Clapham Rail crash #9164
    xileffilex
    Participant

    Emanuel School – correct spelling – played a key role.
    From the report p 50
    One of the first to the scene was a Mr George Cannon who heard a “tremendous bang” in the staff room.[no mention of other teachers] who ran to the edge of the bridge and jumped over the parapet…no worry about 750V DC live rails or anything like that…he climbed into the third carriage of the Poole train with the brake van.The rescue services, he said, arrived in three minutes “They were marvellous. [clue….]…”the whole organisation seemed very smooth and efficient”
    Astonishingly, Mr Cannon seems to make no other media appearance for such a hero.
    The then headmaster died just three years ago
    http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01902/thomson_1902691b.jpg
    Peter Thomson, latterly the head of the Harrodian prep school in Barnes

    Thomson led by example, marshalling the entire school to be first on the scene in the rescue efforts; these ranged from providing cups of tea for survivors, to cutting loose the injured and the dying. Mrs Thatcher later praised the pupils as a credit to the nation’s youth at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/8534089/Peter-Thomson.html

    More witnesses from the school emerged in 2013

    Speaking to the Wandsworth Borough News following the crash Emanuel School pupil 18-year-old Simon Murie, who was one of the first at the scene, said: “The first thing I saw was one man who was obviously dead.
    “Both his legs had been taken right off.
    “There were at least four or five other bodies lying in the space between the two trains.
    “We tried to pull away heavy wreckage burying some of the people, but one man just appeared to have the whole train on him.”

    There must have been blood everywhere…but no mention of it.
    http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/10872484.print/

    Simon Murie now runs a swimming activity tourist venture in Brighton.
    http://www.swimtrek.com/Simon-Murie
    https://www.facebook.com/simon.murie

    Graduated from @emanuel#
    1989
    Secondary school

    http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/news/3980762.print/
    16 December 2008

    wo decades after the Clapham rail disaster, pupils at Emanuel School joined survivors in a memorial service on Friday.
    Many of the 130 injured were rescued from the wreckage by teachers and pupils at the time and taken up to the school for treatment.
    During the service pupils sang remembrance songs and visitors laid flowers on a stone memorial near the tracks.
    Mark Hanley-Browne, headteacher, said: “The pupils and staff of the school were heavily involved in the rescue effort twenty years ago. It is important that we take this opportunity to look back and reflect – and also to gain the strength to look forward.”
    The crash, on December 12, 1988, happened at 8.15 in the morning just outside Clapham Junction leaving 35 dead. A train from Bournemouth ran into the back of a train from Basingstoke and then an empty train from London ploughed into the wreckage.
    Simon Gregory, now head of lower school, was on his way to work when he saw streams of people walking along the tracks.
    He said: “We spent most of the morning looking after the injured, who were dazed and confused. Our minibuses were used as well as the ambulances to ferry people to hospital.
    “Lots of people where trying to ring in. My parents rang in too. No-one knew which train it was.”
    Meanwhile staff and pupils ran down the embankment and risked their own lives to help the injured.
    One boy, Terry Stoppani, was celebrating his 12th birthday and was small enough to crawl into the wreckage and pull people out.
    Others who helped included Peter Pantechi, 14, prefect Simon Murie and head boy Mark Ellis, both 18.
    Mr Gregory added: “They showed incredible heroism. They didn’t think about it, they just got on with it.
    “It’s part of the school’s history, and while it’s not something we’d like repeated, we are proud of the way the children behaved.”
    Most of the pupils were sent home, but a sombre carol service went ahead as planned in the evening.
    An inquiry showed the crash resulted from signalling failures, leading to a major overhaul in safety procedures at British Rail.


    Ellis (L) Murie (R)

    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9154
    xileffilex
    Participant

    Another photo: [on page with the Pathe newsreel]
    https://uk.news.yahoo.com/on-this-day–116-schoolchildren-killed-after-slag-heap-collapses-in-aberfan-disaster-163449393.html

    Apparently three teachers survived at the school, five died. Of the dead, Deputy Head David Bwynon 47 of Penydarren. Also Marjorie Ann Rees 22 of Nelson, where she is buried at St Mabon’s church [ref RHS R25b G30]
    http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Fjfh04gj_ZEJ:www.churchinwales.org.uk/~l079/Churchyard.doc+
    I am finding it difficult to find any other definite names of teachers who died or survived at Pant Glas school, which is curious.
    THe adult deaths which don’t fit in with the pattern are only Nancy WiIliams 44 of 17 Pleasant View and Margareta Bates 35 of nearby Nelson. Neither of these names generates any back story. I can find no names of the teachers who allegedly survived.
    However, at the inquiry, FOUR teachers were interviewed as witnesses [day 3]:
    Morgan, M. Miss
    Teacher at Pantglas Junior School

    Williams, Mrs. R. L.
    Teacher at Pantglas Junior School

    Taylor, Miss H.
    Teacher at Pantglas Junior School

    Williams, Howell
    Teacher at Pantglas Junior School
    http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/day.htm

    I find no mention of the HEADMISTRESS of the junior school at the time, alive or dead. But reported as dead
    http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/aberfandisaster.htm
    which I find strange – the leader of the school, dead, and not named.

    See also the Aberfan Study collection at the University of Swansea, with many audio records which will be of interest to academic students of this event…
    http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/other.htm
    The new headmistress of the new school is interviewed – AUD/526 Mair Jones

    From the BBC…

    My cousin was a teacher at Pantglas Junior school.

    We went home and waiting anxiously to hear if she had survived.

    It was a day or two before we found out that her students’ bus was late so she was in the staff room and not her usual classroom.

    The classroom was completely demolished and she survived but had spent the time helping with the rescue.

    My aunt was district nurse and was on the frontline of recovery but said she had never experienced such heartbreaking sights in her entire career.

    We cried a lot and today we’ve shed another tear. An entire generation wiped out in minutes. So sad.
    Gareth Williams, USA

    Hmmmmmm
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/witness/october/21/newsid_3194000/3194860.stm

    Who was the headmistress??? Have I missed her name??

    PS now I find that Mair Jones was indeed the headmistress and she didn’t die, in contrast to one of the links.

    In 1966, it was led by Headmistress Miss Mair Jones and the 10 teachers… Five teachers were among the dead including the Deputy Headmaster, Mr. Beynon who was found clutching five children in his arms as if trying to protect them.

    http://video.cars.aol.co.uk/the-aberfan-coal-disaster-119994624

    the video is unavailable
    http://fmv-lm01.ehost.aol.com/the-aberfan-coal-disaster-119994624

    Strange still that Mair Jones is such a silent person throughout.

    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9146
    xileffilex
    Participant
    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9143
    xileffilex
    Participant

    Tom – read the DCF Wright online pdf which I mentioned a few posts back – it talks quite a bit about the water. I think though that Wright has drawn heavily on the official narrative as put across at the Aberfan Tribunal. I am guessing that these people were witnesses. I’d love to see the full report.
    These are the key players up the mountain which Davies mentions:
    Charge hand Leslie Davies; the Unit Mechanical
    Engineer at the colliery, Vivian Thomas; Gwyn Brown, the crane driver, and David Jones, a “slinger”

    Alarm bells ring from this part of the story – the men went into the cabin to have tea and thus were saved from the downward mud slide….

    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9135
    xileffilex
    Participant

    Methinks Gaynor’s outpourings need more scrutiny.

    For the moment….
    http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YHFrOhRA3jcC&pg=PA57
    The Aberfan Inquest was concluded in four minutesThat was because a crafty tribunal sat under Sir Herbert Edmund Davies LJ, PC, which had produced the answer required.
    http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19670929&id=Dn9AAAAAIBAJ&sjid=vaMMAAAAIBAJ&pg=6722,5066964
    September 29 1967

    http://centenary.llgc.org.uk/en/XCM1957/book/4/1/1.html

    Davies posed the four broad questions that the Tribunal would look into.
    ?
    What exactly happened?
    ?
    Why did it happen?
    ?
    Need it have happened?
    ?
    What lessons are to be learnt from what happened at Aberfan?
    136 witnesses were interviewed, 300 exhibits examined and 2,500,000
    words heard. The Tribunal sat for 76 days. It was the longest Inquiry of its
    type in British history up to that date.
    How the Topic was Handled
    Before the tribunal began, the Attorney General imposed restrictions on
    speculation in the media about the causes of the disaster. This, together
    with the accusations that earlier public inquiries into pit disasters were
    often whitewashes, exacerbated
    the already tense and difficult circumstances of the Tribunal.

    Click to access InquiriesIncidentTheAberfanDisaster21October1966.pdf

    Thus neatly sidestepping the inquest into the deaths one imagines. A bit like the Hutton Inquiry into the Dr Kelly “death”, which was all about the Iraq war, with only a fraction of the time spent on inquest related areas, which it managed to replace.

    null
    How did this damage pattern come about?

    Remembering the Aberfan disaster – 45 years ago today

    However, conditions were exceptionally difficult – the landslide mass had drained almost as soon as movement ceased, leaving a dense, cohesive mass that was difficult to excavate.

    cf….

    Pathe news footage:
    http://www.britishpathe.com/video/this-is-tragedy

    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9129
    xileffilex
    Participant

    An image here of the mass interment here from across the valley
    http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=D1MEAAAAMBAJ
    page 105

    Some interesting narrative here:

    Click to access aberfan.pdf

    Dr David C.F. Wright

    Notice what he writes about Howard Rees, George Williams,Kenneth Davies, and also the gang at the top of the tip, the private funerals (not ennumerated) the heart attack victim, aged 19 and the soldier (don’t quite understand that) The wrecked school was demolished…
    Notice the warning at the end of the article threatening legal action for copy breach, a strange thing to write in this context. I’m not sure what interests Dr Wright about Aberfan – he’s a musician and composer on the Isle of Wight

    Click to access david-wright.pdf

    who was only 21 at the time he wrote his piece now online, perhaps utilising contemporary news reports.

    Howard Rees was prominent in the video.
    Enos Sims died in 2009 agd 69
    http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/local-news/farewell-aberfan-campaigner-enos-sims-2070925

    He was one of the first rescuers on the scene of the Aberfan Disaster in 1966 and helped set up the Tip Removal Committee.

    Gaynor is a well quoted survivor….
    http://www.caerphillyobserver.co.uk/news/24222/ron-davies-meets-aberfan-survivor/
    February 2011

    Ron “moment of madness” Davies:

    “Gaynor was pulled from the school as an eight-year-old and we were both in tears when I presented the cheque back to her father, who was the treasurer of the fund. It was very emotional to see Gaynor again after all these years.”

    Gaynor Madgwick lost her 10-year-old sister Maralyn Minett, and seven-year-old brother Carl. She was rescued from the wreckage of the school
    with two broken legs
    BBC video, 2010:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00c3jmp

    “All I could see was this black mass shooting through the window”

    Gerald Tarr is mentioned here:
    http://www.john-summers.net/aberfan1.html [Telegraph 1967]

    Families of the 116 dead children are to get £5,000 each, but the rest of the huge Aberfan disaster fund [£1.8 million] sits at Merthyr Tydfil, where the man who launched it says: ‘Even when all the survivors are dead, still most of the fund will be unspent. Then it will go to the Exchequer.’

    http://www.mymultiplesclerosis.co.uk/interesting-documentary/aberfan.html

    Chuck Rapaport, then aged 29, was one of them. He flew in from New York to photograph the incident for Life Magazine. He expected to be coming to a town without children. But, as Rapaport discovered, some children had survived.

    Children like 10 year old Philip Thomas, sent on an errand that may have saved his life. He had been sent, with his friend Robert, down to the senior school to fetch Robert’s dinner-money from his sister, when they heard the loud rumbling. Hugh Watkins, a teacher at the senior school remembers that he thought a plane had crashed into the mountain-side. He recalls “I looked up and saw, coming down, this huge mass of slurry, boulders and trees, welling down as if the mountain had opened up and exploded”.

    As news of the disaster spread, families rushed to the scene, digging with their bare hands to try and save their children. Out of a class of 35 children, Philip Thomas was one of only two who escaped death. It was young survivors like him that Chuck Rapaport had come to photograph.

    Rapaport didn’t get to meet the most seriously injured, because these children, like Philip Thomas, were in hospital for months. Thomas recounts “I lost three fingers from my right hand, I lost my spleen, had a fractured pelvis and numerous scars from my knees to my head. I had a skin graft on the left hand side of my face, my ear was off and had to be sewn back on”

    [No, the video’s not convincing]

    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9128
    xileffilex
    Participant

    Witness Fr Kerrisk died in April 2012 aged 85
    http://www.bmdsonline.co.uk/16152924-obituary-patrick-kerrisk

    http://archive.catholicherald.co.uk/article/28th-october-1966/1/nuns-and-priests-dug-out-dead-at-aberfan
    October 28 1966

    The parish priest of St. Benedict’s,[Nixonvlle, Merthyr Vale] Fr. P. Kerrisk, and his predecessor, Fr. J. Rohan, gave every help.

    Witness Fr John Rohan died in 1994 at the comparatively young age of 61.
    http://archive.catholicherald.co.uk/article/24th-june-1994/3/obituaries

    Obituary Canon John Rohan:

    He will be remembered for his active participation in the rescue operation after the Aberfan landslide disaster in 1966, when he was a supply priest in the area….becoming parish priest at Our Lady of Penrhys, Ferndale, in 1964.
    From 1966, he became parish priest at St John Lloyd, Trowbridge,[Cardiff] for the next 19 years. In 1985, he moved to St Mary’s, Merthyr Tydfil, where he oversaw centenary refurbishments.
    His funeral was at Merthyr Tydfil, and he was buried at Maesteg.

    From the Alan George site – the tips

    in reply to: The Aberfan Disaster- Wales – 1966. #9126
    xileffilex
    Participant

    One thing which stood out looking at the survivor stories and the lists of the dead – the Collins family. A fourth Collins, Michael Patrick, was listed as dead and living at the same address as the others in Moy Road. Yet his parents were different Collins – Gerald was the father, not John.
    There’s some interesting detail online here:
    http://archive.catholicherald.co.uk/article/28th-october-1966/1/nuns-and-priests-dug-out-dead-at-aberfan

    The Welsh valleys were I think predominantly non-conforist Protstant hence the numbers. Some names here:

    Another child, Christopher Gerlach, was in hospital with a fractured skull. Eight Catholic children were brought out unharmed from the rubble of the village school.

    Several Catholic children from nearby Mount Pleasant who were pupils at the Aberfan school escaped because their bus was late. An Aberfan boy, Simon Rees, was sick at home. Some children had also stayed at home to go to the dentist. Anne Lee a pupil at the school, was saved by being pushed out of a window.

    Those are quite strong survival stories. I don’t see any other reference to the boy Gerlach [b.1959, who would have been 6 turning 7 at the time].
    He had a sister Claire, b 1961 who would have been 5. Parents Lawrence [b.1934] Gerlach and Marlene nee Jones. There’s someone with that name now in Weston-super-Mare where the parents also seem to have moved via 192.com. The sister married there in 1984. He would be an important living witness. Yet there is (online at least) silence about the serious incident.

    This online archive is a good source of info:

    Fr Patrick Kerrisk, priest at Aberfan at the time of the disaster, now at Holy Family in Cardiff, had only been in the parish for 11 days when disaster struck. “On the Sunday after the disaster a parishioner, John Collins, now dead, approached me and welcomed me to my new mission…then he asked me to bury his wife and two sons who had been killed while he was at work. It was a humbling experience I shall never forget.”

    [1991]
    http://archive.catholicherald.co.uk/article/18th-october-1991/1/aberfan-joins-to-recall-dead

    It would be interesting to dig out printed copy from 1966 from mainstream newspapers.

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