TV news has provided us all with defining, emotional moments in our lives. I recall five occasions I cried over a news item: the Jonestown massacre in Guyana in 1978 when 918 people died; the Bhopal disaster of 1984 where the initial death toll of 2,259 has risen to 15,000 today; the murders at a primary school in Dunblane in 1996 where a madman killed 16 children and a teacher; the 9/11 events of 2001 where 2,974 died.
None, however, affected me as much as the events of 21 October 1966 when the news was of a colliery waste tip which collapsed on the Pantglas School in the South Wales mining village of Aberfan, killing 116 children and 28 adults.
Somehow, I can identify more with Aberfan than all those other tragedies, because I knew Aberfan well as my family are from Cilfynydd only six miles away, several still there today. Many of those relatives worked at the Albion Colliery, the next colliery to the Merthyr Colliery which had produced the slag heap that moved and wiped out so many lives.
Earlier this year, as part of my Bangor University course I had an assignment to produce a website using the techniques we had learned. I decided to produce a website to tell a new generation about the loss of a generation of young children in Aberfan. Had I realised how emotionally draining it would prove to be I probably would never have started the project but now I’m so glad I saw it through. I discovered that nowhere on the web is there a list of those who died so I made it a project to research local newspapers and I have listed all the names of the children but not all the adults yet. As I transcribed the witness accounts in their own words of parents, survivors, rescuers, miners, police and ministers, I kept having to stop because of tears.
You can see the results of all the work on my website www.hiraeth.org.uk/aberfan and I’d love you leave your comments on this blog. Over the summer I’ll be adding to the other headings you can see on the Hiraeth site and I’d be pleased to have any contributions on things Welsh, particularly under the headings I’m using: Industrial history, Llanberis area, Walking, Castles, Dramatic events, Culture & language, Religious heritage, Snowdonia and Where to stay. This blog will form part of the site later. In my heart-of-hearts, I don’t really believe it’s going to be a ‘barbecue summer’ so my August will be writing a lot of web pages!
