It received nearly 88,000 contributions, totalling £1.75 million. The Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund (ADMF) was established on the day of the disaster. Neither the NCB nor any of its employees were prosecuted and the organisation was not fined. The organisation's chairman, Lord Robens, was criticised for making misleading statements and for not providing clarity as to the NCB's knowledge of the presence of water springs on the hillside. The report placed the blame squarely on the NCB. The main building hit was the local junior school, where lessons had just begun 5 teachers and 109 children were killed in the school.Īn official inquiry was chaired by Lord Justice Edmund Davies. After three weeks of heavy rain the tip was saturated and approximately 140,000 cubic yards (110,000 m 3) of spoil slipped down the side of the hill and onto the Pantglas area of the village. In contravention of the NCB's official procedures, the tip was partly based on ground from which springs emerged. There were seven spoil tips on the hills above Aberfan Tip 7-the one that slipped onto the village-was begun in 1958 and, at the time of the disaster, was 111 feet (34 m) high. The tip was the responsibility of the National Coal Board (NCB), and the subsequent inquiry placed the blame for the disaster on the organisation and nine named employees. A period of heavy rain led to a build-up of water within the tip which caused it to suddenly slide downhill as a slurry, killing 116 children and 28 adults as it engulfed Pantglas Junior School and a row of houses. The tip had been created on a mountain slope above the Welsh village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil, and overlaid a natural spring. The Aberfan disaster was the catastrophic collapse of a colliery spoil tip on 21 October 1966. Resulted in the passing of the Mines and Quarries (Tips) Act 1969
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