Horror beyond belief | Radio Times
Add Aberfan: the Village That Fought Back to your watchlist Margaret Griffiths was at work in the local authority offices in Merthyr Tydfil on 21 October 1966 when the first reports came from the Taff Valley below. A National Coal Board waste tip on the hill above Aberfan, the pit village where the 18-year-old lived, had collapsed. Over 100,000 tons of black sludge had come down the hillside, obliterating houses and the village’s brick and slate primary school. It was 9.15 am, lessons had just begun. “When the news came through, we were all just shocked,” she recalls. “I have a vague memory of getting home and the roads all being blocked. It was chaos.” In Aberfan, Griffiths found hundreds of local people clambering over Pantglas Junior School removing rubble by hand as coal miners dug in the setting slurry for survivors. “I took a tray of drinks down to the disaster site and it was horrendous, like a war zone,” she says. “It was a terrible sight.” Shock turned to dismay when the full …
