BBC piece about Aberfan

Depressingly brilliant, enraging, beautiful in parts

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Feel ashamed to have not known anything about this before. The article is brilliant, but had to stop for a bit when Jeff told his story of being trapped - so so awful

This is all just three years before I was born but the photos make it look like 100 years before.

I don’t think it is as well-known amongst (say) under-40s as other more recent disasters.

The LP Hartley quote at the start of the piece is very apposite

^This.
Almost exactly a year before I was born. It’s remarkable

Use to drive past Aberfan semi-regularly, and my parents would always point out the graveyard and try and explain what had happened. But it’s almost impossible to conceive of the scale of it.

Christ. I’d literally never heard of this before, fucking horrific.

I must have been around four when this occurred. Even so, it still reminds me of my childhood. It was on the telly and in newspapers for weeks and there was a real vibe amongst adults that young children were precious. Seem to remember just a general numbness that pervaded everything.

being from wales, it’s something that i’ve always known about through school and TV and friends family etc. everytime i’ve watched a documentary about it i have to step away for a while because it gets a bit much. i wasn’t alive when it happened but still, fucking destroys me.

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