	Aberfan home	21 October 1966
	Memorial	The aftermath
	Tributes	Witness accounts
	Links	The site today

Aberfan home	On the mountain	In Aberfan	Pantglas Junior School
The rescue	Bereavement	Anger and determination	Recovery

In Aberfan

I heard a noise, a big rumbling noise. … I saw a tree and a telegraph pole coming towards me first, then I saw a big black mass of stuff. … A black wave of muck.
Schoolboy, age 13

As I was walking up the hill where it turns left, I saw a big wave of muck coming over the railway embankment. It was coming straight towards me and I ran. … I saw trams, trees, trucks, bricks and boulders in it.
Schoolboy, age 14

[It sounded] Like a jet plane. … and two or three seconds later I could hear stones and rubble, so I ran back down the hill. I thought it was the tip. … I said "I don’t think it is a jet, it is the tip", and I shouted at them [two boys] to run, and they ran down behind me. … I remember in Moy Road I could see the front windows crashing in, and the front doors; it was like a pile of dominoes coming down. … I went into that lane for shelter; I didn’t know what to do. … I had only got in about a yard and this top of the garage was down and a sheet of zinc came down and hit me on the head, hit me down. … I could not force it off me. There was a lot of bricks on it; it protected me. … [The noise] was suddenly cut off, just like the wireless being turned off. … It stopped as it hit the last house down No.1 Moy Road and there was a terrible silence.
Aberfan resident

In that silence you couldn’t hear a bird or a child.
Aberfan resident