Hello and thanks for downloading witness with me Rob Walker and today we're going back 50 years to an accident in a Welsh coal mining village that shocked the whole of Britain.

The South Wales disaster, it's now feared that nearly 200 lives were lost when the coal tip at Abravan near Merse Tidwell slid forward today.

It's October the 21st, 1966. News has started to emerge of a disaster in the Welsh

mining village of Abavan. A huge tip of coal waste has slid down the mountain.

In its path, two dozen homes and the village school.

It was a Friday morning and myself, my brother and my other sisters,

we got up that morning the usual way,

random stairs to try and get ready to go to school.

Gainer Madwick was eight years old at the time.

She's speaking here to BBC Wales in 2006.

It's been raining and raining previously for quite a few days. In October you got all the

mist down the mountainside so it was like a very dark dreary day. Anyway we went to the school, sat down in my class right to the front of the school.

And obviously we done the register.

Anyway, the teacher began to start the lesson and the

mathematics and he was standing and near us the door of the classroom.

Jeff Edwards, one of Gaynor's fellow pupils,

also speaking to BBC Wales in 2006.

There was a sort of a thundering noise,

and that thundering noise got gradually worse and worse and noisier and noisier.

The lights in the classroom

which were on these long

pieces of electric wire

...