On Friday,
October 21 1966, 144 people, 116 of them children, were killed when a waste tip containing unwanted rock from the local
coal mine
? collapsed onto the village of Aberfan
? in south
Wales. The children killed were mainly pupils at the Pantglas Junior School which was situated close to the tip.
At the Tribunal of Inquiry into the Aberfan Disaster the [National Coal Board]? was found to have been responsible for the disaster due to "ignorance, ineptitude and a failure of communication". The collapse was found to have been caused by a build up of water in the tip - when a small rotational slip occurred the saturated fine material of the tip liquified and it flowed down the mountain.
/Talk