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Monolog gan Fardd Cenedlaethol Cymru, i gofio hanner canrif ers trychineb Aberfan

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This monologue was written by Ifor ap Glyn, National Poet of Wales to note 50 years since the Aberfan disaster. The piece was commissioned by Wales Millennium Centre for the Aberfan Memorial Concert on Saturday 8 October 2016, and was read onstage by the actor Siân Phillips.

Mamgu's Letter

(A grandmother is trying to compose a letter, with pad and biro in hand)

"My dearest grand-daughter..."

Na... "Annwyl wyres..."

You've asked me to write what I remember for your school project, so I suppose you want Mamgu to do it in Welsh, ond cariad bach, smo i'n gwpod beth i weud tho ti...

Silence is a hard habit to break... right from day one, this wasn't something we talked about... it was a non-subject.

Mae'n rhyfedd pan ti'n meddwl am y peth. Tra bod y byd a'i bartner yn ein trafod ni, a'u editorials, news items ac yn y blân, tra bod beirdd yn sgrifennu cerddi amdanon ni, a'r holl eirie 'na'n golchi droson ni... ôn ni'n gweud dim...

The thing is, how could you find words to express what we'd seen? We were numb, in a void - and the words rushed in from outside to fill that void... it was like... a tipslide of sympathy... they meant well, of course they did, but we were just trying to keep going...

Felly... beth alla'i weud tho ti 'bach? Like I say, silence is a hard habit to break...

It was foggy that day ...niwlog ac ôr... and your dad and your aunty dressed for school by the fire. I gave them both a shilling for their dinner money (-that's like five p now) - and your aunty didn't want to go, but I wasn't having it;

(cajoling but firm)

'Dim ond 'eddi 'to - a fydd dim ysgol am wsnoth wetyn'

Your aunty was the same age as you now...

Rôdd y swllt yn ei llaw 'i o 'yd, pan dynnw'd 'i mâs o'r llacs...

She loved singing... and hide an' seek...

I often wonder what she might have become... what all those children might have become...

It was difficult for your dad after that. He stopped playing in the street, so that other parents 'wouldn't see him and get upset.' When he went to hs new school, hard by the railway line, he ran home the first day when he heard the coal trains thundering by, on the tracks - it sounded like when the tip came down.

We were tested in different ways.

For months afterwards, your Bampy used to put his finger in my mouth when I was sleeping - as if he was sweeping my mouth clean of muck. It's what he'd been doing that day down at the school with the children, when they were fetching them out. He didn't know he was doing it - he was still in his dream.

In one sense, it was all a dream. He would go to the Mac more often. 'I've only 'ad four,' he'd say, '...'elps me see clearer...' But it was the fog that he really wanted... to wind back to that foggy morning, and make it all... un-happen. Is that a word? Byddi di'n gwpod yn well na Mamgu, wi'n siwr...

So... how much should you know? Mae'n rhan o dy 'anes di ... rhan o 'anes ein teulu ni. But I can't share my guilt with you, for making the child I lost go to school that morning. I wish I'd never shared that with your Bampy even... and that I felt guilty for having a child that lived. But I wouldn't have you otherwise!

None of this makes sense...

Let me show you some pictures from afterwards...

Dâth bachan o America gyta'i gamera ar ôl y drychineb a buws gyta ni am gwpwl o fisodd wetyn. Rapoport his name was. Shgwla di ar ei lunie fe.

There's the first baby born afterwards... the first wedding... the first smiles. (How many hundreds have been since then, thank God?)

Those pictures show us carrying on... because we had to... but there are things that those photos can't show...

Like... candles in pockets. Your aunty was afraid of the dark... I would light a candle for her in the cemetery. Lots did. It was like a second home to us for a long time afterwards... I would take extra candles in my coat pockets, in case someone else's had burnt down to nothing...

These are things I will carry with me till I die. But do you have a right to them?

Because it was so terrible, should you feel (like so many before you) that it's your duty to comment, to sympathise, to identify?

Elli di ddim, cariad bach - ond smo'i isie iti anghofio chwaith. I can only give your aunty flowers... ond rhanna'i beth alla'i 'da ti...I'll give you the memories that I can...

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This monologue was written by Ifor ap Glyn, National Poet of Wales to note 50 years since the Aberfan disaster. The piece was commissioned by Wales Millennium Centre for the Aberfan Memorial Concert on Saturday 8 October 2016, and was read onstage by the actor Siân Phillips.

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Coal tips: Areas of Wales with most higher-risk sites revealed

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Rhondda Cynon Taf has the largest number of higher-risk coal tips in Wales, with 75 posing a potential safety threat, new figures show.

A council-by-council breakdown of where Wales' 327 higher-risk tips are located has been published, including 71 now revealed to be in the worst category.

There are calls from opposition parties for precise locations to be disclosed.

But First Minister Mark Drakeford said the Welsh government was not hiding anything.

Andrew Morgan, leader of Rhondda Cynon Taf (RCT) council, said the tips were regularly monitored and checked for movement, but long-term investment was needed.

"Clearly, if climate change is going to see more heavy rain in short periods of time, we want to make sure and give assurance to residents that the tips are stable," he told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast.

As well as RCT, Merthyr Tydfil and Caerphilly have large numbers of high-risk tips.

The information was published ahead of a coal tip safety summit on Tuesday between Welsh and UK ministers.

Category A tips are either "minor" or have already been restored, while category B ones are unlikely to cause a risk due to their size or location.

Category C and D tips pose a higher potential safety risk, but the Welsh government stressed it did not mean they posed an imminent or immediate threat, but that more frequent inspections were scheduled.

It also renewed calls for the Conservatives in London to fund work to repurpose, reclaim and remediate disused coal tips, which it thinks will cost £500m to £600m over the next 15 years.

But the UK government said the Welsh government was "more than adequately funded".

Climate change has raised concern that extreme weather could increase the risk of tips becoming unstable.

A landslide at Tylorstown in RCT following Storm Dennis prompted new work to identify all disused coal tips in Wales.

The study, conducted by the Welsh government with the UK government's Coal Authority and others, identified 2,456.

While 1,155 and 678 are in category A and B groups respectively, 256 are in category C and 71 are in category D.

Rhondda Cynon Taf has the highest number of high-risk tips, with 23 category D and 52 category C.

It is followed by Merthyr Tydfil with 14 in category D and 45 in category C, then Caerphilly, which has seven in D and 44 in C.

Neath Port Talbot has the highest number of disused tips of any authority, but only has 12 category D and 27 category C.

Ceredigion, Conwy, Denbighshire, Gwynedd, Newport and Vale of Glamorgan have no recorded disused coal tips.

Many tips are in private ownership and the Welsh government said the figures were subject to change.

It also plans to introduce a new management regime and law which would have a new categorisation system.

The Welsh government said it was the first time it had published a breakdown by council area, but opposition parties have previously called for more detail of their locations.

Under current plans the Welsh government hopes to publish the details in the first half of next year.

Mr Drakeford told BBC Wales that his government will publish precise locations "as soon as we are confident that it is in proper order, ready to be shared".

"70% of coal tips in Wales are privately owned. There's quite a complex piece of work to be done to make sure we've got all the proper details in good order," he said.

Philip Thomas, from Ynyshir, lives less than 100m from a coal tip and runs social media accounts calling for action to clean up the sites across south Wales.

He said while the figures were not a surprise, it was "shocking that there are so many higher risk tips out there".

He added: "What goes through my mind is if they're teaching children that Aberfan is a terrible disaster, and we should never forget, why have we forgotten?

"Why has it taken Tylorstown for us to realise that these tips have been there?"

Labour 'blaming others'

Welsh Conservative Janet Finch-Saunders said it was "vital Labour ministers provide more detail on the locations of these sites and urgently announce an action plan to put local communities' worries at ease".

"However, all we have seen so far is Labour ministers blaming others. They've had ample opportunities to protect people and communities by making these coal tips safe, but as ever, they've chosen not to act, instead they've opted to pass responsibility."

Plaid Cymru's Heledd Fychan urged both the UK and Welsh governments to work together so that Aberfan is never repeated.

She said: "People living in the communities most at risk should also be told the status of the coal tips nearby, so that they can help authorities by urgently reporting any changes they may see."

Mr Drakeford said winter inspections were under way for higher-risk tips.

"We recognise how concerning living in the shadow of a coal tip can be for communities and we want to reassure local residents that a lot of work is being done to ensure they are safe.

"Our funding settlement does not recognise the substantial, long-term costs of remediating and repairing these sites."

A UK government spokesman said: "In 2020, to help with the unforeseen impact of Storm Dennis, we provided £31m of additional funding to the Welsh government, of which £9m was to repair vulnerable coal tips.

"Ultimately, however, the management of coal tips in Wales is a devolved matter and therefore not one the UK government would expect to provide additional funding for."

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Coal tips: Areas of Wales with most higher-risk sites revealed

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Rhondda Cynon Taf has the largest number of higher-risk coal tips in Wales, with 75 posing a potential safety threat, new figures show. A council-by-council breakdown of where Wales' 327 higher-risk tips are located has been published, including 71 now revealed to be in the worst category.

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How the 1966 Aberfan Mine Disaster Became Elizabeth II's Biggest Regret

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The avalanche raced down a steep hill in Aberfan, Wales, sucking everything in its path into the chaos: landscape, buildings, an entire schoolhouse. When David Evans, the owner of a local pub, heard about it from a neighbor, he ran into the street. "Everything was so quiet, so quiet," he told historian Gaynor Madgewick. "All I could see was the apex of the roofs."

The avalanche wasn't snow-it was coal waste that had slid down a rain-saturated mountainside. On October 21, 1966, nearly 140,000 cubic yards of black slurry cascaded down the hill above Aberfan. It destroyed everything it touched, eventually killing 144 people, most of them children sitting in their school classrooms.

The tragedy in Aberfan would become one of the United Kingdom's worst mining disasters-and it was completely avoidable.

Despite the magnitude of the calamity, Queen Elizabeth II at first refused to visit the village, sparking criticism in the press and questions about why she wouldn't go. Finally, after sending her husband, Prince Philip, in her place for a formal visit, she came to Aberfan eight days after the disaster to survey the damage and speak with survivors. Nearly four decades later, in 2002, the queen said that not visiting Aberfan immediately after the disaster was "her biggest regret."
READ MORE: Queen Elizabeth II: 13 Key Moments in Her Reign

PA Images/Getty Images

The foundation of the disaster was laid nearly a century before, when the Merthyr Vale Colliery, a coal mine, was opened in the area. Wales had become famous for coal mining during the Industrial Revolution, and at its peak in 1920, 271,000 workers labored in the country's coal pits. By the 1960s, coal mining was in decline, but was still a lifeline for some 8,000 miners and their families around Aberfan.

Coal mining creates waste, and the waste rock was dumped in an area called a tip. Merthyr Vale had seven tips. By 1966, the seventh tip, which was begun in 1958, was about 111 feet high and contained nearly 300,000 cubic yards of waste. It was precariously placed on sandstone above a natural spring, which lay on the steep hill above the village.

As mining progressed, the heaps of waste grew and grew. In 1963 and 1964 residents and local officials had raised concerns about the seventh tip's location with the National Coal Board, which owned and operated the mine. They were especially worried because the tip was located right above Pantglas Junior School, which was attended by about 240 students.

Those concerns were all too prescient, but the National Coal Board ignored them. "The threat was implicit," notes the BBC: "make a fuss and the mine would close."

On October 21, students at Pantglas were only scheduled for a half day of school ahead of a mid-term break. It had been a rainy day, but that wasn't unusual-not only had it been raining for weeks, but the area got at least 60 inches of rain annually. The children had just arrived at school when it happened: saturated by rain, the fine coal material piled on the hill liquefied into a thick slurry and began hurtling toward them.

It happened so quickly that nobody could prepare. Students heard a sound like a jet plane. It was black quicksand burying everything in its path. The slurry hit the school, slamming its walls to rubble and pouring in through the windows. Pipes burst and water began flowing outside the school.

Down the hill, the town, which had begun to flood from streams clogged with debris, sprang into action. Emergency workers and volunteers ran up toward the school to help. "Civil defense teams, miners, policemen, firemen and other volunteers toiled desperately, sometimes tearing at the coal rubble with their bare hands, to extricate the children," reported The New York Times. "Bulldozers shoved debris aside to get to the children. A hush fell on the rescuers once when faint cries were heard in the rubble."

Alix Palmer, a young journalist on his first major assignment, went to Aberfan to report on the rescue efforts. It had been hours since anyone had been pulled out alive. "The fathers straight from the pit were digging," he wrote to his mother afterward. "No-one had yet really given up hope, although logic told them it was useless."

In the aftermath, the true scale of the disaster became clear. One hundred and forty-four people were dead, 116 of them children. Half of the village's children had been killed. "All our friends were gone," Jeff Edwards, who survived the disaster pinned beneath his desk, told the BBC in 2016.

A tribunal later concluded that the National Coal Board was responsible for the disaster after examining 300 exhibits and interviewing 136 witnesses. "The Aberfan disaster could and should have been prevented," said the tribunal in its report. The disaster was a matter "not of wickedness but of ignorance, ineptitude and a failure in communications," it wrote.

Rowan Griffiths/Mirrorpix/Getty Images

Great Britain quickly mobilized on behalf of the people in Aberfan. The Aberfan Disaster Memorial Fund, which was set up on the day of the disaster, raised the equivalent of $16.6 million in modern dollars. The money was used to pay for repairs in the village and the care of those who were injured and bereaved in the disaster.

But the money also had to help pay for the removal of the remaining tips that lurked above the village. The head of the National Coal Board refused to visit Aberfan and parents of children had to prove they were "close" to their children to receive a payment of £500 from the board. The funds for removing the tips were only repaid in 1997-without interest.

Someone else had lingering heartache about the Aberfan disaster: Elizabeth II. Instead of visiting herself, she sent Prince Philip in her stead. "We kept presenting the arguments," an advisor told biographer Robert Lacey, "but nothing we said could persuade her." Finally, she had a change of heart and visited eight days after the slide, speaking with village residents and showing poignant grief-an uncharacteristically emotional display for the usually stoic queen.

For the people of Aberfan, the visit was part of the healing process. "They were above the politics and the din and they proved to us that the world was with us, and that the world cared," Marjorie Collins, who lost her eight-year-old son in the disaster, said in 2015. But nothing could make it less bitter to lose a child. "I lost my daughter and we were lucky to save the lad," an Aberfan father told LIFE in 1967. "No amount of money will fetch any of them back, will it?"
READ MORE: Queen Elizabeth II and the Apollo 11 Astronauts Had an Awkward Encounter After the Moon Landing

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How the 1966 Aberfan Mine Disaster Became Elizabeth II's Biggest Regret

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The avalanche raced down a steep hill in Aberfan, Wales, sucking everything in its path into the chaos: landscape, buildings, an entire schoolhouse. When David Evans, the owner of a local pub, heard about it from a neighbor, he ran into the street. "Everything was so quiet, so quiet," he told historian Gaynor Madgewick.

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Children have been fascinated for generations with paper cutouts, and paper people holding hands is the most popular one of them all. Making paper people holding hands is a perfect activity to occupy children after school, on a rainy day or any other time. So let's learn to make paper people holding hands.

Materials

The Step-by-step

1. Fold a sheet of paper like an accordion. Make sure all the sections are the same width.

2. Measure the width of one section of the accordion. Mark a section of cardboard the same width.

3. Make a template. Draw a picture person whose hands are extended to the sides on the marked off section of cardboard. Cut out the person.

4. Place the template on the top section of the accordion. Trace the image onto the paper. Make sure the hands extend touch the folds of the paper on each side.

5. Cut out the image while holding the paper in the accordion form. Make sure not to cut either of the folded edges where the arms end. If you do, you will have a lot of separate dolls.

6. Unfold the paper. You should have a whole chain of paper people holding hands.

7. Color your paper people with crayons. [sources:Parents Connect, Family Education]

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Children have been fascinated for generations with paper cutouts, and paper people holding hands is the most popular one of them all. Making paper people holding hands is a perfect activity to occupy children after school, on a rainy day or any other time. So let's learn to make paper people holding hands.

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It is exactly 50 years since tragedy swooped down on Aberfan killing 116 children and 28 adults. The story of what happened in the south Wales mining village of Aberfan is a devastating one which dealt a similar fate to the children who survived it.

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All Things Bright and Beautiful (Children's Poem) | our homework help

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A collection of powerful images by the photographer I. C. Rapoport in the weeks following the disaster. ...

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"How do you turn catastrophe into art?" asks Julian Barnes in A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. "Nowadays the process is automatic. A nuclear plant explodes? We'll have a play on the London stage within a year ... War? Send in the novelists ... We have to understand it, of course, this catastrophe; to understand it, we have to imagine it, so we need the imaginative arts."

Acknowledging this need, the Tisch School of Arts runs a course entitled Art and Catastrophe. "The aim of this course is to examine the demands placed on the practices of art - writing and image-making - by catastrophe," says the blurb. "Art after catastrophe has therefore variously played the role of testimony, memorial, mourning, indictment, advocate and healing; it has been considered both essential and a luxury."

In a report I wrote last year (for a subscriber design site), I identified a trend in disaster-inspired design and architecture, examples being the hurricane-proof Dalí Museum and the EDV-1 Robotic Emergency Shelter, deployable in disaster zones. This phenomenon coincided with a report by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) stating that 2010 had been "the deadliest year for natural disasters in more than a generation". Given the urgency of catastrophe, the utility of design precedes the functionlessness of art. But now a trend is emerging in disaster art. And as we'll see, occasionally, in times of disaster, art can adapt and encroach upon utility.

A monochromatic map is alive with delicate white traces, inscribing themselves teemingly, with intricate hidden order, upon the black, borderless background of the United States. These white traces designate the movement of the wind and they appear sinuous, or like active wood patterns, or fluttering fur, depending on the weather conditions. The Wind Map, an animated chart of wind flow created by Fernanda Viégas and Martin Wattenberg, uses data from the National Digital Forecast Database. This is not science, however, but, as the creators say, "artistic impression". And while the Wind Map is not specifically disaster art, its subject is full of catastrophic potential, as is intimated by the project page on the creators' website which solely displays stills of Hurricane Isaac - testament, perhaps, to the higher aesthetic potential of intense natural conditions.

Massive Tsunami Crashing; Collisions | Bus vs Car; Break | Wall: these are some of the abrasive, jarring titles of Israeli artist Eyal Gever's ongoing series of works which capture frozen moments of disaster. Gever was trained by the Israeli military to calculate the effects of explosions using computer simulations. Using this training, a 3D printer and computer software he developed himself, Gever creates resin models of computer-generated, virtual disasters. "My art addresses these notions of destruction and beauty, the collisions of opposites, fear and attraction, seduction and betrayal, from the most tender brutalities to the most devastating sensitivities," says Gever. "I oscillate between these opposites."

2011's Great East Japanese Earthquake and the ensuing humanitarian catastrophe prompted - and continue to prompt - responses from the country's artists. Artists and the Disaster: Documentation in Progress, an exhibition at the Art Tower Mito gallery, is displaying work created in the wake of the disaster by twenty-three artists. The exhibition's definition of art is wide and encompasses an innovative method, designed by an artist-volunteer, to remove sludge. In fact, as the exhibition's website says, it seeks to "redefine art": Many of the artists' works "encompass activities that were carried out by temporarily shelving one's identity as an "artist", as well as projects carried out without the expectation that they would later be exhibited as an artwork. The attitudes and actions of these artists represent a renewed questioning of the concept of art as established by modernity, and demonstrate the sort of role that art ought to play in society - perhaps more strongly and forcefully than ever before".

Catastrophes are humbling and I see a certain modesty in the work of the artists mentioned above. It recalls the Romantics beholding nature in fear, apprehension and awe.

Artists have always seen beauty in disaster, in tragedy, in terror, as is captured in the notion of the sublime. "Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime," wrote Edmund Burke. "That is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling." With the rise of disaster art, some of today's artists are tapping into the long tradition of the sublime to inform their subject matter. Others, rather than evoking disaster in their art, are responsive to it, and disaster is present implicitly in the work's context. Either way, the artist bows before disaster's supremacy.

There are some artists though who, while acknowledging the might of catastrophe, consider it subservient to art.

"[W]e also need to justify it and forgive it, this catastrophe, however minimally," continuesBarnes in his History of the World. "Why did it happen, this mad act of Nature, this crazed human moment? Well, at least it produced art. Perhaps, in the end, that's what catastrophe is for." Well, Julian, try telling the victims and their families that. Try telling the injured, the dispossessed, the maimed, the traumatised that. Try telling the dead that. No, catastrophe is not "for" anything. And that is what makes it so compelling to artists: its unquellable, unappeasable, pointless nature. To say it is for something, to say it serves a purpose, to ascribe functionality to it - this diminishes its terror, diminishes the tragedy of the loss of life it causes, and diminishes the power of the art it inspires - which is contrary to what Barnes is trying to do. To suggest that catastrophe is art suggests agency and intent. Perhaps Barnes has solved the age-old paradox: if there exists an omnipotent, benevolent God, how can He allow catastrophes to take place? I doubt that is what Barnes is attempting. I believe what he's guilty of, by ascribing a function to catastrophe and granting artists exclusive use of that function, is the tedious crime of romanticising art, and, thus, elevating the status of the artist beyond that of, say, a plumber - which is, or should be, nonsense. As shown above, the Japanese artists, with their broadening definition of art and their temporary rejection of the appellation "artist", have a much more modest approach.

The Tisch School of Arts which runs the Art and Catastrophe course is part of New York University whose website last week had an information alert reading: "NYU is Closed Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 29-30, Due to Hurricane Sandy". If catastrophe is what art is for, as Julian Barnes says it is, then closing an art school at a time like this seems unbelievably, squanderingly irresponsible.

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â?oHow do you turn catastrophe into art?â?? asks Julian Barnes in A History of the World in 10A½ Chapters. â?oNowadays the process is automatic. A nuclear plant explodes? We'll have a play on the London stage within a year ... War? Send in the novelists ...

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A town without children: Photographing the 1966 Aberfan disaster - Amateur Photographer

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January 18, 2017

October 21st 2016 marked the 50 year anniversary of the Aberfan disaster. During that fateful morning, 116 children and 28 adults were killed when a colliery spoil tip collapsed onto the village, completely destroying the Pantglas Junior School.

Over in the USA, a young freelance photojournalist, I.C. Rapoport, who had been working for LIFE magazine, was moved by the footage of the disaster which was beamed around the world - one of the first times a major disaster had been televised almost as soon as it had happened.

Speaking from his home in LA, Rapoport, or Chuck as he is affectionately known, describes what inspired him to travel across the globe. "I had an obsession to go to Wales. The photographer W Eugene Smith was an idol of mine, and he had shot a very well-known photo essay on Wales for LIFE magazine just after World War Two. It was a political story that he was illustrating with photographs. He went to Wales and photographed miners and sheep farmers to get a sense of the underclass of Wales and the UK. His photos were really remarkable; they were stark, black and white, crisp. Those images stayed in my mind. When I heard about this disaster in a mining villages in Wales, something told me that it had a potential for really special photos."

Getting the assignment

Convincing his editors at the magazine to let him travel would probably be a long shot, he suspected, as he had only just started working freelance for the magazine and they were already planning to run news images in that week's issue. Luckily, having completed a photo essay that same year which had gone down well with the editors gave him some cache. He tells us: "In the summer before the disaster, I shot a photo essay that was very well received by the editor called The Detective, about a New York City detective from the Times Square precinct, which one of their best writers wrote the text piece. When they first gave me the assignment they expected it to be a one or two day shoot. Instead, I went and lived with them, just stayed with them in their squad room. So that was a big story, it ended up being 12 or 14 pages of text and photos.

"But they continued to give me small assignments which really disappointed me. But I was young - I was 29 and I didn't have much experience. They had a lot of photographers on their book; they had 30 staff photographers and all these freelancers that had come along before me."

So keen was he to photograph Aberfan, Rapoport ending up speaking directly to the editor-in-chief of the magazine, going above the head of the picture editors who usually commissioned him. He bypassed the idea of covering the story from a fresh news angle, instead pitching the essay as 'a town without children', something the editors eventually jumped at.

"The worst kind of dirt you can imagine"

Arriving at the village around eight days after the disaster along with writer Jim Hicks, what Rapoport saw had an immediate impact. "They had cleaned up the streets," he recalls, "but they were still covered with a half-inch of slurry, the worst kind of dirt you can imagine. My imagination of Wales based on Smith's photos and other photos had always been a cold, wet, dirty place. When I arrived in Aberfan, my idea of Wales was reinforced - that's exactly what it looked like. It was the end of October, it was a very cold winter that year."

Rapoport arrived with 60 rolls of black and white film and 20 rolls of colour film, but over the next few weeks he would come to shoot over 120 rolls. He carried with him three Leica M2s - two of which he had bought upon getting the commission to cover the story, with a 28mm, a 50mm and a 90mm lens attached. He also had two Nikon F SLRs, with a 180mm lens and 400mm lens - the latter of which he says he barely used.

A town with suspicions

For a town that was coming to terms with the terrible events that had unfolded just a few days prior to Chuck's arrival, it wasn't easy to accept yet another journalist arriving in their midst.

"There were some people who had a very bad taste in their mouths about journalists, and so they wanted nothing to do with me. They felt the press had treated them poorly. You had a situation that was very traumatic and you had 100 journalists there and everyone is looking for a story. The journalists are under a lot of pressure to bring back a story that's better, different or unique, and so they're pushy. Pushy is a pretty mild word for what some of the things they did," he explains. "I came on the heels of that - the town had cleared out of journalists by the time I arrived. But then this guy shows up with his cameras - they were very suspicious of me and cautious.

"Fortunately, being an American helped because their upset was with London, mostly, and the English. Also, I had a certain charm - I was interested in their lives and I wasn't writing anything down."

Although moved to take photos as soon as he arrived in the town, some subjects were naturally much harder to broach than others. "It took me a while to get to the cemetery - at least two weeks. I felt that was one place that I would really be an intruder. I was told by everybody what was going on in the cemetery - the mothers would go there two or three time a day. People said 'You don't want to go there, Chuck' - but of course I did want to go there; I knew those photos would be valuable, but I was nervous about it.

"There were two entrances and somebody tipped me off to go to the top entrance. I looked in and I could see mothers and the graves, from a long distance - that's when I used my 180mm lens. Slowly, I entered the cemetery and got closer and closer to these people. The women looked at me - some of them had a really unpleasant look on their face when they saw me up there. Others would say 'Oh you're the photographer from the States, the Yank'. I would talk to them. I wouldn't take their picture but I would ask permission if I could photograph them at the grave. Some of them would say no, but most of them said to do what I wanted - they were still in shock."

The nightmares begin

Rapoport became a regular fixture in the town, but being away from home where he had a wife and a 5-month-old baby started to take its toll and he suffered from nightmares depicting his own son being caught up in the disaster.

"I kind of separated myself from the emotion of it all. My blog series is called "Nightmares from a Disaster" because I had nightmares when I was sleeping. I would wake up in the middle of the night, because I had this baby at home. There was all this stuff going on in me emotionally: I was missing my family, missing my kid, and you know, through dreams, the longing for my kid turned into seeing my kid covered in mud and being killed. I woke up, I didn't know where I was, in this place. I have a feeling what contributed to the nightmares was the fact that I was suppressing my feelings," he recalls. "They were telling me horrible stories and I would just listen and nod, and try not to become emotionally involved. So it came out in my nightmares."

Life-changing

The fate of one of Rapoport's subjects was changed remarkably thanks to his photographs. John Collins lost his wife and two sons, along with his home and everything within it in the disaster, leaving him with not so much as a picture to prove they existed. "We went to see him, and he was weeping, he was in total shock. I had my camera on my lap and I couldn't bring myself to pick it up and take his picture while he was going through this. Jim Hicks kept looking at me, motioning me to shoot. I was frozen. Finally, I lifted my camera and I looked and I said, 'John, do you mind if I take a picture of you?'. He just looked at me and said 'It's your job, man, it's your job'. So, he released me and I shot a whole roll of pictures.

"I never went back to Aberfan after I took those picture, so all I remember of John Collins was that he was a lost soul - I never knew what happened to him. Then, in 2010, I received an email out of the blue from a woman named Bernice Collins. She said her mom was an American woman who was so moved by my picture of John Collins in the LIFE story that she contacted him, they started a romance, got married and had a daughter - the woman who had emailed me. She said I just wanted you to know that he had a second life and he was very happy. That was so moving, I couldn't believe it. My photograph turned his life around, him telling me to take his picture turned his life around. If he had said to me don't take my picture, I wouldn't have, and there would have been no photo of him in the magazine, and there would have been no American woman who would have seen him and called him. So if you put all those things together, it's fate."

Chuck has had contact from others in his photographs too, especially once they were exhibited in Merthyr Tydfil to commemorate the anniversary of the disaster in October 2016.

"One was a woman, who said: 'My name is Wendy Evans. You don't know me but I'm the little girl you photographed in the cemetery walking down the hill'. I didn't know who she was, so she identified herself, saying 'I'm that person'. The bride who I photographed for the first wedding since the disaster, she came to the launch of the exhibition. She came over and kissed me and hugged me and said 'I'll always remember you - you're so important in my life.

Christmas delivery

Chuck stayed in the village until Christmas. "My wife came over with my son about 10 days before Christmas and I went to London to meet her. Jim Hicks, my wife and I went back to Aberfan for Christmas with a car-load of toys and we went about visiting all of the people that we had photographed and gave toys out to the kids that had survived.

"One of them is Ronnie Davies - you can look up his picture. Ronnie is the kid with the dog who goes to the wreckage of his home. I met him again in 2006, when ITV made a documentary. When I first met him and photographed him, he was a broken kid, his brother had died in the school and he was so filled with guilt. He kept saying to me, over and over again, 'why did my brother die and not me?' I said to him that maybe God has a plan for you and kept you alive, and that he had to honour his brother and grow up to be a good man.

"So, here I am meeting him 40 years later in his house with his wife and he asks me: 'Do you remember what you said to me when we met?' I said that I kind of remembered, but he remembered it verbatim. His wife was in the background and she said 'and he's been a good man.' And then he went away and he left the room and he came carrying a Subbuteo game. He brought this box out, and he showed it to me, and I suddenly recalled from looking at it - it was in perfect condition. He said, 'You gave me this game on Christmas Day when you left, and I've kept it ever since'. His wife said that he keeps it in a drawer, nobody's allowed to touch it. Well, I started to cry - it was so emotional."

The story was eventually published in LIFE Magazine in January 1967 after Rapoport had spent nearly two months living in the Welsh village. He photographed the first baby born after the disaster, as well as the first wedding. His photographs represented the people left behind, forced to move on with their lives, but it's a hopeful piece which shows the resilience of the community. The gamble paid off; it was well received by his editors, and continues to fascinate 50 years later. Currently living in L.A., his photos were recently exhibited in Merthyr Tydfil, just a few miles away from Aberfan. The work from the LIFE essay can be viewed at Chuck's website, along with fascinating posts about his recollections from that time. Below are some of the images that were featured in the photo essay.

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A town without children: Photographing the 1966 Aberfan disaster - Amateur Photographer

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January 18, 2017 October 21st 2016 marked the 50 year anniversary of the Aberfan disaster. During that fateful morning, 116 children and 28 adults were killed when a colliery spoil tip collapsed onto the village, completely destroying the Pantglas Junior School. Over in the USA, a young freelance photojournalist, I.C.

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Landslides in Art Part 28: Cantata Memoria - in memory of the Aberfan Disaster

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Cantata Memoria, in memory of the Aberfan Disaster

Later this month will mark the 50th Anniversary of the Aberfan Disaster in South Wales, the worst landslide disaster in British history and an event that has left an indelible scar on a generation. In brief summary, on 21st October 1966 a spoil heap of coal waste failed above the village of Aberfan. The resulting flowslide struck the village, and in particular the school, killing 116 children and 28 adults. Clearly I will post again on this topic in the fortnight ahead, and of course I posted about it five years ago. To mark the anniversary, the composer Karl Jenkins has written a new piece entitled Cantata Memoria. This is released by Deutsche Grammaphon today an\d will be premiered at a concert in the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff tomorrow.

Last Saturday, the Guardian ran a piece that provided some background to the composition of Cantata Memorium. The article is worth a read - in this extract Karl Jenkins explains the thinking behind the work:

Cantata Memoria: For the Children/Er Mwyn y Plant is both music and a poem. It is not a documentary, nor even a dramatisation, but it does include a conflation of ideas and facts that are by now part of the legacy. There wasn't just one cortège (the title of a movement), but we do know that "All Things Bright and Beautiful" was sung at Pantglas School from time to time. A poignant line in the hymn has sinister ambiguity in our context as the "rivers running by" alludes to the hidden river running underneath the village that contributed to the disaster. The Welsh song "Myfanwy" (written by Joseph Parry from nearby Merthyr Tydfil and also quoted) was sung by the soldiers who dug for victims. "Myfanwy" was also the first piece performed by the local Ynysowen Male Choir, formed after the tragedy, and from which the community sought to find some solace.

The text is multilingual: English, Welsh and Latin (from the Mass), while also referencing words in many other languages which, it is hoped, symbolise how this memorial is at once both specific and universal.

Cantata Memoria, sung by Bryn Terfel among others, is in two distinct sections but performed continuously. The first deals with the disaster and its immediate aftermath, and the second moves from darkness to light, reliving memories and celebrating childhood.

There is a an extract of the work on the Classic FM website, and it should be viewable below:

.

It is haunting to the degree of being almost painful to me. It is a wonderfully fitting memorial to this most outrageous tragedy. It sits beautifully alongside the work by Laura Siersema, also written to remember the tragedy.

Other posts that may be of interest

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Landslides in Art Part 28: Cantata Memoria - in memory of the Aberfan Disaster

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Cantata Memoria, in memory of the Aberfan Disaster Later this month will mark the 50th Anniversary of the Aberfan Disaster in South Wales, the worst landslide disaster in British history and an event that has left an indelible scar on a generation.

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The Aberfan Disaster of 1966

In 1966 an entire village, called Aberfan, in Wales, United Kingdom, was struck down by a terrible tragedy when a coal tip behind the village tumbled down, wiping out a farmhouse and its occupants, a row of terraced houses and smashed into the rear of a school, burying alive almost half of its pupils. As the floodwaters that accompanied the tip, added to the mains water pipe that burst, rushed down the road, others were swept off their feet and some were swept away from the senior school yard and the road outside.

There are many individual stories of personal tragedy within this one event - there were 116 children who lost their lives that day and 28 adults.

But, with a small, close-knit, village, some tragedies cut deeper than others.

Indeed, locally, it was considered that there was a little "pecking order of grief", whereby those who lost the most were given more "room for their grief" than those who had lost nobody or had lost less.

How do you measure grief when you've lost a child? How does that compare to the lady over the road who lost two? Or the widow round the corner that lost a husband?

From this turmoil, emerged some stories. At the time, in the mid-1960s, we're reliant on little written information. But one American photojournalist arrived the week after the tragedy and lived in the community for a month. He was writing for Life Magazine, who carried a series of articles about the tragedy. Forty years later, with the 40th anniversary looming, the photojournalist returned to the village and caught up with a few people's stories.

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At the time and, mostly, since, most of the residents have never spoken of their grief, never given their stories. A few were co-erced into sharing their grief at the time, but with 144 dead even a photojournalist living among the people got very little information out of anybody.

It's a shame that so many personal stories will have been taken to the graves of people.... but they were their personal stories and if they'd shared them at the time they'd have been bothered by journalists every time the papers wanted a story.

IC Rapoport

That photojournalist was IC Rapoport, who was stationed in the Pentagon and White House as military photographer during the JFK administration and has worked for LIFE, National Geographic, Newsweek, and TIME.

The book he published on the 40th anniversary was simply called Aberfan, with a sub-text of "The Days After. A Journey in Pictures".

130 pages long, is described as:

...this pictorial journey commemorates figures with the dignity of being people rather than victims. As social history, they construct a narrative of development that is ultimately positive even though some of the individual images are so delicately, tragically moving. These pictures show the community not only in its devastation but also in its social and historical particularity. The interiors, the clothes, the miners going underground, the woman holding a baby in a shawl-all paint a portrait of something lost.

The front image is of Jeff Edwards, who was the last survivor pulled alive from the wreckage of his school in 1966.

Photo of John Collins

The Man Who Lost Everything

IC Rapoport coined this phrase when he referred to John Collins. John had lived at 78 Moy Road, Aberfan, with his wife Gwyneth and two children. Peter Collins was aged 10 and Raymond John Collins was aged 14 and are named Aberfan victims.

Also registered at the same address was a Michael Collins, he wasn't the son of John and Gwyneth, Michael was the son of Gerald and Sheila. I can only assume that Gerald and John were brothers and the lads were cousins.

John Collins had been determined not to be a miner and had studied hard to "better himself" and get a good job. His wife, however, didn't want to leave the area, so John settled in Aberfan with his family and took a more local job, working for an aircraft controls manufacturer as an Engineering Inspector.

That morning he'd gone off to work as usual - only to return home later that day to discover that his house had been flattened, it was no more; the slurry had squashed and squeezed it, killing his wife, who was inside. His two boys had also been killed at the same time, in two different places. Younger son Peter was at the junior school that was flattened and Raymond was along the road in the school yard of his school when he got swept away by the floodwater that came with the slurry - a mains pipe had been burst by the avalanche of coal debris, causing a lot of people to be swept off their feet.

John had nothing left except the clothes he stood up in. He didn't even have a photo of his wife and children.

John didn't even have anybody to attend the funeral with - and so he asked the local, new, vicar to go with him. He was given an exercise book from his son, that a teacher provided for him - and, another sad little snippet of information that can be gleaned from IC Rapoport's book is that son Raymond had been a School Prefect - he was wearing his prefect's badge when he died and John Collins removed it from his body.

At the time John broke down and said "The law of averages says I have 31 years left. What can I do with that? I can't live. I can only exist"

So, the man who had nothing was left with just the clothes he stood up in, one exercise book and a prefect's badge. I do hope that somebody did have some photos of his family they felt able to give to him at some future point :(

But, John Collins' story didn't end there! Mr Rapoport went off and got on with his life, however, recently, he was contacted by somebody wishing to know if he had a photo of John Collins that had appeared in Life Magazine! That person said that it was "the picture my mother first saw of him ....." - it turned out that a lady had read the Life Magazine article, carrying John's story and had got in contact with "the man who lost everything". She'd then married him and they'd had a child. John Collins had since passed away and his child was compiling the family history and wanted that particular photo.... so, there was "some good" in John's life, although he didn't actually end up living those "31 years" he'd originally spoken of in his grief.

So, on balance, John had a happy ending - but that wasn't the case for the second man who lost everything!
Bill Evans
Bill Evans also lost his wife, two children and his home. Looking at the records this one is harder to spot.

My apologies to the family if I have any of the details incorrect, or if I have misjudged something, that wasn't my intention at all. Comments can be left at the bottom of this page without registering to correct any errors.

From the information on the graves of Evans' deaths, there are three graves that appear to match this story.

Patricia Margaret Evans, aged 31.

Hywell Lloyd Evans, aged 6 years.

Gareth Victor Evans, aged just 3 months.

These are marked as the family of William Lloyd Evans, 81 Moy Road, Aberfan. As Bill is a short name for William and the family mix fits, plus the home address, I've assumed this is Bill's beloved family. It is also possible that he lost his father that day in the same tragedy.

This address is in the terrace of houses that was obliterated by the tip.

Bill Evans was a teacher before the disaster, at Queens Road school. After the disaster, for nearly ten years Bill relied on tranquilisers and drink to get him through his days. He had finally given those up, but still struggled to sleep at all. He also commented that his jaw often ached from gritting his teeth and hiding his feelings :( Poor Bill.

William Lloyd Evans died in October 1981, just 16 years after the Aberfan disaster.

Some stories have been left untold. Many stories were taken to their graves by the grieving. Without the opportunity, or desire, to tell their personal story, they kept it deep inside them, grieving quietly and remembering that day until the end of their days.

There are scraps of information that we can try to piece together to see "the person", but the world was a different place in the mid 1960s. In addition to a shortage of information, with nobody really wishing to tell their tale - and, even in IC Rapoport's situation, hearing 1000 tales, it would be impossible for every sad tale to be captured. I'm sure coming up to the 50th, with a lot of the older generation having passed, today's modern social-media-driven society will have relatives sharing the family stories with us via the Internet as they've heard the stories ever since they were small.

RIP Bill, reunited.

Peter Minett on September 27, 2018:

I knew Bill Evans just after the tragedy. Peter Leyshon invited him to join an expedition to Arctic Norway with the South Wales mountaineering club shortly afterwards to take his mind off things. He was not a climber but seemed to enjoy being away from civilisation for three months.

He was a great bloke. Liked him a lot. I heard through friends that he remarried later to a head mistress.

Dedicated Content Curator (author) from United Kingdom on October 30, 2016:

RadiumGirl - there were many vicars in the village, I believe there were something like a dozen congregations and their leaders.

RadiumGrrl on October 22, 2016:

Great work, I admire people that research & I understand the need to find things out, in detail. Aberfan has haunted me since I heard of it, but only recently did I realise there were farms & houses also decimated.

Minor discrepancy on John Collins, I read 'Former Aberfan teacher Hugh Watkins recalls: "On the day of the funerals, John asked if I could walk with him because he had no one left. The only thing I could give him was Raymond's exercise book." - not the Vicar? Maybe the vicar was conducting the actual funerals. 'Fr Patrick Kerrisk, priest at Aberfan at the time of the disaster, now at Holy Family in Cardiff, had only been in the parish for 11 days when disaster struck. "On the Sunday after the disaster a parishioner, John Collins, now dead, approached me and welcomed me to my new mission...then he asked me to bury his wife and two sons who had been killed while he was at work. It was a humbling experience I shall never forget." :( At least John did find some happiness again, bizarrely via the Life magazine photo-story

Andrew Thomas on October 19, 2016:

You are correct, we all knew that Bill lost his wife and children.

He died of a heart attack on the golf course in the early 80s.

Andrew Thomas on October 19, 2016:

Bill Evans was my teacher in Merthyr in the 70s and 80s. Poor man looked haunted. Desperate story.

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In 1966 an entire village, called Aberfan, in Wales, United Kingdom, was struck down by a terrible tragedy when a coal tip behind the village tumbled down, wiping out a farmhouse and its occupants, a row of terraced houses and smashed into the rear of a school, burying alive almost half of its pupils.

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Instead of wave a wave of black slurry
Instead of Mt Fuji - Pantglas Jr
Children, parents, miners, clock in 'water'

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Sophia | NLA Design and Visual Arts ...nladesignvisual.wordpress.com

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Shift by David Garner | Exhibition - Wales Arts Review

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Shift by David Garner | Exhibition - Wales Arts Review

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Brady Knight reviews the exhibition Shift by David Garner, an exploration of Welsh history heavily focused on the tragedy of Aberfan.

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Artist's Aberfan memorial airs on national TV

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Welsh artist Nathan Wyburn will appear on TV tonight (Monday, September 27) to win the chance to create the UK's next 'landmark'.

Nathan is among three contestants in the Welsh heat of the series Landmark, which airs at 8pm on Sky Arts and Freeview channel 11, or on demand.

He chose as his sculpture for the heat a piece he created to honour the victims of the Aberfan disaster.

"To be one of the three chosen to represent Wales is amazing," said Mr Wyburn, who is currently exhibiting work in Italy.

"And to be here in Rome, representing Wales, as a Welsh artist in a foreign country, is such a big thing and I am proud to do it."

"They gave the three of us a budget to make something that represents the nation," he added. "I think they were expecting something big and flamboyant like a Shirley Bassey piece, but I wanted to take the opportunity and the money to do something I had never done before and wanted to make a tribute.

"I can't find something more hard-hitting than what happened in 1966, and I wanted to do something for that."

The memorial sculpture - called '21.10.1966 144 9.13am' in reference to the time, date and number of victims at Aberfan - is currently on display at Rhondda Heritage Park.

During its creation, Mr Wyburn met relatives of a man called Johnny, a miner on whom who the statue is based.

"I got the chance while we were filming to be able to meet some of his family and hear more about him," Nathan said. "I felt I had to, not just to find out more, but to get permission to do this.

"I'm not sure how much is going to be shown on the episode, but we went to the memorial, and they told me about him.

"He worked in the mine. He had just left after a night shift and was at home getting ready to go to bed when he got a call telling him what happened.

"He was one of the first people on the scene and spent days digging trying to find survivors. It made it more personal after hearing his story.

"I chose to use one clock for every victim, all stopped at 9.13 which is the time the landslide hit the school."

Among the judges for the Welsh heat is singer Charlotte Church. The heat winner will join winners from five other UK regions in the grand final for a chance for their work to be made into a permanent fixture in Coventry, the 2021 City of Culture.

If you value The National's journalism, help grow our team of reporters by becoming a subscriber.

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Artist's Aberfan memorial airs on national TV

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Welsh artist Nathan Wyburn will appear on TV tonight (Monday, September 27) to win the chance to create the UK's next 'landmark'. Nathan is among three contestants in the Welsh heat of the series Landmark, which airs at 8pm on Sky Arts and Freeview channel 11, or on demand.

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The Green Hollow, Owen Sheers' new book, is a deeply moving poetic history of Aberfan, a beautifully rendered portrait of what the mining village was like, what was lost, and what it is like now.

Published: April 2018
Publisher: Faber & Faber

In 1966 a coal slag heap collapsed on a school in south Wales, killing 144 people, most of them children. Poet Owen Sheers has given voice to those who still live in Aberfan, the pit village in which tragedy struck, and uses their collective memories to create a striking work of poetic power. This is a portrait not just of what happened, but also of what was lost. What was Aberfan like in 1966? What were the interests of the people, the social life, the sporting obsessions, the bands of the day? What was the deeper history of the place? Why had it become the mining village it was, and what had it been before the discovery of coal under its soil? Perhaps most significantly: what is Aberfan like today?

The Green Hollow is a historical story with a deeply urgent contemporary resonance; a story of what can happen when a community is run by a corporation. It is also a story known along generational rather than geographic borders. Based on the BBC One production, The Green Hollow is a beautifully rendered picture of a time and place - and a life-altering event whose effects are irrevocable.

Review on BBC Wales: www.bbc.co.uk/programmes

Interview with Owen in Wales Arts Review: www.walesartsreview.org/the-green-hollow-talking-to-owen-sheers

Buy the book: www.waterstones.com/book/the-green-hollow

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The Green Hollow, Owen Sheers' new book, is a deeply moving poetic history of Aberfan, a beautifully rendered portrait of what the mining village was like, what was lost, and what it is like now. Published: April 2018 Publisher: Faber & Faber In 1966 a coal slag heap collapsed on a school in south Wales, killing Read More ...