[SystemSafety] Aberfan 50 years on [No Classification]

Barnes, Robert A (NNPPI) Robert.Barnes2 at rolls-royce.com
Mon Oct 17 18:56:02 CEST 2016


This message has been marked as No Classification by Barnes, Robert A (NNPPI)


As a child in a Welsh school, I was taught about Aberfan.  The slag heap was described to us as having a rotten heart.  Visiting it again later in life, and reading more about what the NCB knew about at the time, it seemed like a culture of wishful thinking, that the heap was stable even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

The tribunal into the disaster summarised "... the Aberfan Disaster is a terrifying tale of bungling ineptitude by many men charged with tasks for which they were totally unfitted, of failure to heed clear warnings, and of total lack of direction from above.  Not villains but decent men, led astray by foolishness or by ignorance or by both in combination, are responsible for what happened at Aberfan."  Too many man-made disasters follow this template.

-Rob

-----Original Message-----
From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of paul_e.bennett at topmail.co.uk
Sent: 17 October 2016 14:12
To: Peter Bernard Ladkin; The System Safety List
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Aberfan 50 years on

On 17/10/2016 at 1:18 PM, "Peter Bernard Ladkin" <ladkin at causalis.com> wrote:
>
>Friday is the 50th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, when a tip 
>collapsed and overran a primary school in Aberfan, Wales.

[%X]

>I remember as a 15 year old being thoroughly shocked and deeply, deeply 
>saddened. All those kids, much younger than me, dead and gone. There 
>must have been comments doing the rounds that it was a "natural 
>disaster", because I remember thinking "Rubbish. Someone built that 
>tip, right above a primary school. Or someone built that primary school 
>right under the tip. One or the other."
>
>It was far worse than that. Slides had happened before at Aberfan, and 
>elsewhere, and it was well known, locally and at the NCB, that the tip 
>was build on top of springs. The NCB had simply been ignoring the 
>situation.
>
>It is astonishing how people in power, such as Robens at the NCB, could 
>get away with such a response as Greenslade and Edwards describe. It 
>bears thinking about. It is such past situations that have led to the 
>HSE and to the crime of corporate manslaughter. We have people such as 
>Lord Cullen to thank for all that.

Peter, As a younger person than you (but not by much) I also remember that incident and how I felt that it was the unthinking folly of the NCB that was the root cause. I had, by that time, seen other man-made embankments collapse under the influence heavy rain. Fortunately, the ones I witnessed caused no loss of life.

Regards

Paul E. Bennett IEng MIET
Systems Engineer

--
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