Pantglas Junior School

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Pantglas Junior School was a school for young children in the Welsh town of Aberfan. On 21 October 1966 a landslide of coal waste from a nearby moutainside destroyed the school, killing 116 pupils and 5 members of staff. The site now contains a memorial garden.

1 History
2 The disaster
3 Aftermath
4 External links
5 References

[edit] History

Pantglas was founded in Victorian times, this being evident from the lights that are connected to long wires attached to the ceiling, and for generations each child of every family in Aberfan, a mining village near Merthyr Tydfil, had been sent there. By 1966, there were ten teaching staff, led by headmistress Anne Jennings. It had 240 pupils in all. It sat right in front of Merthyr mountain, and looked out towards the colliery tips.

[edit] The disaster

[edit] Pre-9.15AM

On October 21, 1966, according to eyewitness accounts, it was a damp, wet day, and had been so for the past fortnight. Mineworkers arrived early that morning and noticed that colliery waste tip number 7 had sunk around 3 metres overnight. A worker went down the mountain on foot to request material stopped being added to the tip, by the time the order was received, it has sunk 6 metres. Meanwhile, as the last day before the half term break began, some pupils were still in the school playground, others were filing in to classrooms. ^[1] ^[2]

[edit] 9.15AM

At 9.15am, colliery waste tip number 7 started to slide down the mountain towards Aberfan. It destroyed two farm buildings and crossed a disused canal and railway embankment before englufing the school and 18 houses nearby. ^[1] Gaynor Madgewick, then an eight year old pupil, told the BBC in 2006:

We heard a terrible, terrible sound - a rumbling sound - it was so loud. We just didn't know what it was. It seemed like the school went numb. I was suddenly petrified. It got louder and louder. I remember thinking: 'Something terrible is going to happen.' Then it just went black. I tried to run for the door but I never made it. Next thing I remember is waking up to a terrifying nightmare. There was chaos, debris everywhere, children everywhere. A couple of my mates were lying underneath me and at the side of me. One little boy - a friend - died at the side of me. ^[3]

[edit] Post-9.15AM

As the extent of the disaster became clear, thousands of rescuers flooded to Aberfan from nearby communities to attempt to help locate survivors in the wreckage of the destroyed school and houses. Many simply brought shovels and began to dig for as much as 10 hours. However, after 11.00am no more survivors were found, though it took a week to recover all the bodies of the dead. When the deputy head teacher was found dead he was, according to one rescuer, "clutching five children in his arms as if he had been protecting them." ^[2] The final death count totalled 116 children and 28 adults, of which 121 were in the school. George Thomas, then Secretary of State for Wales, said "a generation of children has been wiped out." ^[2]

[edit] Aftermath

In the aftermath of the disaster £1.75m was donated to the village. Some of which was used to help relocate the remaining coal tip as the government refused to pay for it in entirety. This money was eventually repaid in 1997, though without interest payments. An inquiry condemned the National Coal Board for its "weaknesses and failures" in mamaging the coal tips, and the government was heavily criticised, yet no one was prosecuted. ^[3]^[2] The remains of the school were demonlished and a garden planted in memorial to those who died. ^[4]

In 2003 a study of 41 of the 145 children who surivived the disaster concluded "almost half of them had experienced post-traumatic stress disorder at some point since." When compared to a control group, the survivors, now adults in their 30s and 40s, still "suffer problems such as nightmares and difficulty sleeping." ^[5]