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At about 9:15 a.m. on 21 October 1966, after days of heavy rain, a waste tip from Merthyr Vale Colliery sited above springs slid down onto Aberfan in South Wales, burying Pantglas Junior School minutes after morning assembly. It killed 144 people, 116 of them children, most aged seven to ten. Gaynor Madgwick, aged eight, was trapped in her classroom and dug out alive, but her brother and sister in the same school were killed.
Locals and council officials had raised concerns about the tips above the village before the disaster, and the official tribunal found the National Coal Board wholly responsible. Yet no one was prosecuted, dismissed or demoted, and the bereaved community was pressed to let money from the public disaster fund help pay for removing the remaining tips. The grievance comes from both the negligence and the institution's ability to absorb blame while individuals within it and the state avoided the cost.