Aberfan

It is the anniversary of the Aberfan disaster, a story that breaks my heart whenever I think of it.

This interactive about it by the team at Wales Online from a few years ago is, to my mind, one of the best produced and most moving story-telling memorials ever made for the web. Do give it some moments of your time.

Wales Online: Aberfan – 50 years on

It is just unimaginable what those people went through and how little outside assistance they received from the authorities, who of course had ignored prior warning that a disaster like this was possible.

Every time I read it another little detail strikes me.

This year it is a line from Melvyn Walker, who was eight years old when he managed to escape from the school. He says: “I couldn’t go to school for two years. Nobody knew, I couldn’t tell anybody. I used to go out and then head up to the mountainside in my uniform and sit there on my own all day.”

It’s just absolutely heart-breaking.