Clues from the CAA

摘要

Forty-one years ago, at 9.15am on 21 October, a waste tip slid down a mountainside into the mining village of Aberfan, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales. The slide engulfed a school and 20 houses. The disaster claimed 144 lives - 116 of them schoolchildren. According to Aberfan: Government and disasters, by Professor Iain MacLean, Aberfan illustrated a failure by the mines inspectorate to look above ground. The inspectorate's culture, which drew from ex-colliers, was underground.A tribunal found many witnesses had been oblivious to what lay before their eyes. They were like moles being asked about the habits of birds, it said.