INTRO | HIGHLIGHTS | FEATURES | FOCUS | PERSPECTIVES | BIOS
Since the accident, coal spoil tips have been
treated as engineering structures requiring
proper design and maintenance. A Derelict
Land Unit was set up in Cardiff not long
after the disaster to restore brownfield land,
including former sites of collieries and land
used by the coal industry. New ways to dispose
of colliery spoils have also been developed.
Psychosocial Effects of Disaster: Birth Rate in
Aberfan. British Medical Journal, 1975
Lessons learnt
After the disaster, a fund was created that
attracted donations of £1,750,000 (equivalent
to about £30 million today), with money being
received in the form of more than 90,000
contributions from over 40 countries. This
fund distributed the money in a number
of ways, including direct payments to the
bereaved, the construction of a memorial,
repairs to houses, respite breaks for villagers
and the construction of a community centre.
However, the fund itself attracted considerable
controversy.
First, when the fund was created it did not
include any representatives from Aberfan
itself; subsequently, after protests from the
villagers, five places through democratic
election were created.
Remarkably, no other members of the disaster
fund were elected democratically. Second,
in the aftermath of the disaster the NCB and
the Treasury refused to accept full liability,
and thus to fund the removal of tips that
still loomed above the village. Lord Robens
claimed that it was too expensive to remove
the tips, with an estimated cost of £3 million
pounds. In response, the community of
Aberfan formed a Tip Removal Committee to
actively seek out contractors for estimates
to remove the tips. Eventually the tips were
removed by the NCB, but using £150,000 that
Lord Robens appropriated from the disaster
fund. Understandably, this caused long-term
resentment in the community. In 1997, this
sum (but without interest) was repaid to the
fund by the UK government.
1.
Report of the Tribunal Appointed to Inquire into
the Disaster at Aberfan on October 21st, 1966.
H.M.S.O. 1967
The Legacy of Aberfan
The village of Aberfan continues to be
profoundly affected by the disaster in
1966, despite the change in population
that accompanied the closure of the colliery.
According to a psychiatric study that undertook
a follow-up of the disaster in 2003, many
people who lived through the Aberfan Disaster
continue to suffer regular bouts of posttraumatic stress. However, the majority of
survivors refused to participate in the study.
In common with observations of large-scale
disasters in other locations, soon after the
landslide the birth rate of Aberfan and Merthyr
Vale increased dramatically, such that by 1972
it has been calculated that more additional
children had been born than had been lost in
the tragedy. This is a phenomenon known as
biosocial regeneration, which is a subconscious
response primarily by couples who had not lost
a child in the disaster.
The Aberfan Disaster also led to detailed
studies of the beh