Despite the jobs and prosperity, the coal brought a terrible price in human suffering. On the 21st of October, 1966, one of the slag heaps (created from all the waste generated during the extraction process) just above the town of Aberfan gave way and the debris slid down into the town. 28 adults and 116 children were killed. The children were located in the Pantglas junior school in the path of the debris avalanche.
So 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of Aberfan. I was only two years old at the time - but I do remember the terrible impact on the community, not far from my home. I remember my dad taking me on a trip through the valleys one day, and he showed me the location.
To help me remember and to pause to consider what is lost, I tried to capture the disaster in a small watercolor painting. Instead of my typical precision using photographs, this was actually a painting that was very spontaneous and drawn from my memories of seeing the pictures that have found their way onto the Internet. So forgive the fact that details are blurry and probably very inaccurate. But this is what popped into my head. Ironically, this was painted in just a few minutes as I took an opportunity to sit outside on an unusually warm spring day in Dayton, Ohio. Such a contrast - from a spring day full of life and sunshine to remember a much darker day in the fall of 1966. But remember we must.
More information can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aberfan_disaster and http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/politics/aberfan/home.htm
