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On the mountain |
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On the mountain
… I told him [Vivian Thomas] what I told him before, that the tip
was sinking pretty bad and what were they going to do about it. … He
told me to go up to the tip, take a burner with me, and get the crane
back as far
as I could for we were to start another tipping site later on in
the week. …
[Q. When you got to the front of the tip, did you see how far it
had sunk?] I should say about 18 to 20 ft. … [The crane rails] had broken off
and fell down into the hole. … I told the boys that we would
get the rails up from there and start and put the crane back. I said
before
we start we have a cup of tea, and we went back into the shack. We
were not there five minutes …
Tip gang chargehand
I was
standing on the edge of the depression, sir, I was looking down into
it, and what I saw I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was starting to
come back up. It started to rise slowly at first, sir. I still did not
believe it, I thought I was seeing things. Then it rose up after pretty
fast, sir, at a tremendous speed. Then it sort of came up out of the depression
and turned itself into a wave, that is the only way I can describe it,
down towards the mountain … towards Aberfan village, sir. … And
as it turned over, I shouted: "Good God, boys, come and look at this
lot". … I was looking down in the crevice, sir, down
at the drop, and it seemed to me like as if the bottom shot out.
Tip worker
We were
not in there more than five minutes when I heard a shout. … We
all got out in a matter of seconds. … We all stood there, sir, on
the front of the tip. … I saw the tip going in … all I can
tell you is it was going down at a hell of a speed in waves. I myself ran
down the side of No. 3 tip, all the way down towards No. 2 and No.1 tip
on the side. As I was running down I heard another roar behind me and trees
cracking and a tram passing me. I stopped – I fell down
in fact. All I could see was waves of muck, slush and water.
I still
kept running
… I kept going down shouting. I could not see, nobody could. … I
was stumbling and I got stuck in a bit of the slurry. I could
hear a rush behind
me and all I could see was soaking wet slurry like waves coming
down, more water than muck itself coming down.
Tip gang chargehand
… I
never expected it would cross the embankment behind the village which
I could not see because of the mist which covered the whole
of the village.
There was nothing I could do. We had no telephone to give an
alarm or any warning device. I shouted, but it was no good.
Tip gang chargehand
It never dawned on me or came to my thoughts, sir, that it had
gone as far as the village.
Tip worker
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