Speaker for Tuesday 9th September 2014 - Mr. John Roberts
Talk by John Roberts on "The Aberfan Disaster of 1966'
Club Vice President John Graham, welcomed members to the meeting on a lovely sunny day and then went on to introduce our speaker for the morning Mr. John Roberts. John was born in Wales and came to N. Ireland where he lectured in Geology at Magee from 1962 to '68 and then at the NUU in Coleraine. His topic for the meeting is very close to his heart. John is a member of the Portstewart Probus Club, so no stranger the giving talks and the Golf Club. John then went on to give a very detailed talk and PowerPoint presentation about 'The Aberfan Disaster of 1966'. He focused on the geological conditions of the area and the misplaced positioning of the mine spoil tips, the agent of disaster!
John began the talk by giving the members an understanding of the 'power of water'. Showing a selection of photos of 'Glen Canyon Dam' in the USA. This massive dam creates a lake (Lake Powell) with a shoreline of over 2,000 miles, and sits in a National Park that's about half the entire size of NI. John then asked us to think about the weight that volume of water would have on the Earth! John went on to tell us about other dam projects that had been misplaced and the havoc caused when the weight of water brought landslides and death to the area - sighting one case of a 200 metre high tidal wave the took 2,000 lives.
Looking at Aberfan, John showed us a collection of aerial shots from around that area. These clearly showed the steepness of the slopes of the valleys and the precarious positioning of the spoil tips near to all the mines. John then showed a number of slides showing the geological strata throughout the valleys indicating the coal seams and their positioning near the 'fluid' nature of the 'mud rock' strata.
With specific reference to the Aberfan mines, John then illustrated how and why these local tips had been failing over the years; the effect of additional water underground and the geological warnings given; which all had been ignored by the coal board. We then had photographs of the area before 1966 and views of the track created by the landslide from tip number 7, destroying all before it.
John concluded his talk by showing photos of the aftermath of the slide in Aberfan itself and the graves of those that perished. He then read out some of the findings of the Government enquiry into the disaster, which basically blamed the Coal Board for it's building of tips over ground containing natural springs.
Although John's detailed talk ran a little over time, we managed to short question and answer session. Among these were: Would surface water alone cause a problem? - Not really, it's the foundations that really matter. How is water volume calculated? - That's the expertise of the Civil Engineers. What was built first, the tip or the school? - The School. What warnings were there? - There were several incidents from tip number 4, but were ignored.
A vote of thanks was proposed by Nigel Semple who thanked John for his interesting and thought provoking talk. As we are approaching the 50th anniversary of this disaster the talk was a poignant and enlightening reminder of that sad event, for which we thank John Roberts. The thanks were passed on by the Vice President. The members showed their appreciation.
Mike Turner - Secretary
To find out more about the Aberfan Disaster, click on this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster
