Hello everyone, and welcome back to Scary Interesting. In this video, we're going to examine three
of the worst disasters in human history. Frustratingly, two of these seem
to have been entirely preventable, if not for a series of mistakes
made by the people involved. Then, in contrast, the third story required
a once in a lifetime natural event to occur for what eventually transpired. But either way, in each of them,
the effects were beyond devastating. As always, viewer discretion is advised. [intro music] By the early 1900s, trains were moving passengers
and freight across parts of the Pacific Northwest, that had been all but impassable
just a few years before. Rail transportation had become
relatively safe and efficient, but collisions, derailments, and other
accidents weren't unheard of. This is especially true in mountainous areas known for steep grades, rugged terrain,
and harsh winters. Conditions like these are expected and
planned for in the Pacific Northwest, but in early 1910, a winter storm
of almost biblical proportions would result in one of the worst disasters
in US history. Wellington, Washington is a small, unincorporated
town about 80 miles east of Seattle that was founded in 1893 as a depot
for the Great Northern Railway. Despite its small size, Wellington had
a hotel, a general store, a post office, a small power plant, and a modest hospital. Wellington also sits at about 4,000 feet
above sea level and is regularly hit by some of the
region's harshest weather. But despite this, it is actually one
of the only passable routes through that area of the Cascade Mountains. In the mid 1890s, the Great Northern Railway
hired well-known engineer, John Frank Stevens, to determine if it would make a suitable rail route. Stevens concluded that it was possible,
but this meant that at least one tunnel would have to be bored through a mountain
known as Windy Mountain. Construction of this first tunnel
began in the summer of 1897 and was completed a few days before
Christmas in the year 1900. Upon its completion, it was 8 miles long,
18 feet wide, and 25 feet high through solid rock
underneath the mountain. From then on, passage through the Cascades
was made drastically easier and fueled the American westward expansion. A decade later, on February 20th, 1910,
the area was being hit by a massive winter storm. If you know anything about the area, you know blizzards
are frequent occurrences in the Cascade Mountains, but this was unlike anything
most residents had ever seen. Some witnesses claim that almost a foot of snow
fell every hour for two days straight, and that nearly 18 feet had accumulated
in Wellington by the 23rd. And this wasn't soft, light powder;
it was a thick, heavy mix of snow and ice that locals and railroad employees
referred to as Cascade Cement. Now, even though this was a particularly bad storm, the railway crews were quite prepared
for lots of snow. They had massive rotary snowplows fixed to
the front of powerful locomotives. These giant plows were generally capable
of clearing even the deepest banks and shooting the snow hundreds of feet away
from the tracks, almost like a giant snow blower. But during the storm of 1910, the snow
was filled with rocks, trees, and other debris that slid onto the tracks
that even the rotaries couldn't cope with. However, the tracks east of Wellington
were still open on the morning of the 23rd as two trains made their way from Spokane to Seattle. The first was a passenger train,
and the second was a fast mail train. Both trains passed through the Cascade Tunnel
without incident, but then after emerging on the west side, the conductors got worried that
they'd have to stop in Wellington because the tracks and mountain passes
ahead of them were totally impassable. The passengers weren't particularly
surprised at the news, considering the weather they'd already come through, and nobody was looking forward to a long delay,
but at least they were stopped in a town instead of some featureless stretch
of track in the middle of nowhere. But even though they were in Wellington, because
the avalanche risk was so high, dispatchers considered parking both trains
in the Cascade Tunnel. This would have protected them from the weather, but the idea was eventually decided
against because the train's idling coal-fired boilers would have filled the tunnel
with fumes in a matter of minutes. Instead, the trains entered Wellington,
and set their parking breaks between Windy Mountain on one side
and Tye Creek on the other. Then, of the more than a hundred passengers and
crew on board, most stayed on the trains. This is because the hotel in town was already full, and the travellers generally assumed they'd be able
to resume their journey in a day or two when the weather conditions improved. But then by the 26th, so three days later,
the storm showed no sign of letting up, and all communication was lost that afternoon
when telegraph lines finally went down. By then, the passengers had basically
no choice but to sit and read, nap, or stare out the windows at the storm. Several days later on the 29th,
the temperature began rising, and the snow tapered off noticeably. Unfortunately, this reprieve was short-lived, and in just a few hours, the snow was replaced
by rain, intense winds, lightning, and then thunder that shook the
canyons around Wellington. By the morning of March 1st,
the increasingly weary passengers had been stranded for more than a week
when they heard a huge thunderclap. At that moment, one of the great
northern employees, Charles Andrews, was walking to one of the company's bunkhouses
not too far from the hotel. And like everyone else, he was startled
by how loud it was. Then, when he instinctively looked up
toward the mountain, he witnessed what he would later describe
as "white death". A massive, continuous sheet of ice
and snow, more than 10 feet high, a quarter of a mile deep, and half a mile long,
broke free from the mountain and began sliding toward Wellington. As it accelerated, Charles said that it shook the earth and sounded like a runaway train
gathering speed on a long descent. Even more horrifyingly, mixed in
with the roar of the avalanche, he could hear the sounds of
shearing rock, snapping trees, and eventually, twisting steel as the massive snow
slammed into the park trains. Thankfully, the brunt of the avalanche
missed the hotel, but the two trains were immediately
ripped off the tracks and carried nearly a hundred feet down the ravine
into Tye Creek as if they were weightless. Inside, the passengers and employees
were thrown through the air and a few even ejected through
open windows on the way down. When the trains had come to a stop, and by
the time the cloud of snow cleared, many of the train cars were covered
by as much as 40 feet of snow. Almost immediately, people from the town
and railroad employees rushed down to the creek to see
if anyone had survived, but first, they had to actually clear pass joists through the snow to reach the partially buried trains. They would then spend the next three hours
in direct line of secondary avalanches, rescuing as many people as they could. But in the end, only 23 passengers
were still alive to be rescued. And because telegraph lines were still down, they had
no way of requesting help from any other city. Eventually, a hotel guest volunteered to walk
to the town of Scenic, almost seven miles away to deliver the message
in person. Once the man got there, a spare rotary snowplow
was sent to Wellington, but then its 20 crew members were also killed when it was derailed by an avalanche on the way. Then, sadly, another 63 Canadian
railroad employees were killed just three days later during a similar incident
in Rogers Pass, British Columbia, about 435 miles to the north. In the end, the avalanches resulted
in the loss of 96 people, including 35 passengers and 61 railroad employees. Once the weather had cleared, the Wellington survivors
were eventually sent to nearby Wenatchee, and by then, the tragedy had become
front-page news all over the US and Canada. In the days following the incident,
dozens of people who didn't make it were strapped to toboggans and hauled
through the narrow canyons to trains that eventually transported them to the
nearby cities of Everett and Seattle. After the avalanche, no train would cross
Stevens Pass until the snow was removed and the tracks were repaired,
more than three weeks later. And due to the exceptionally bad winter that year, the last few people weren't recovered until July -
five months after the incident. The winter of 1910 was one of the worst
in Washington's history, but the sheer volume of snow
wasn't the sole cause of the avalanches. The conditions became even more dangerous when the temperatures rose,
and the snow turned to rain. This added tons of weight to the huge mass of ice
and snow that had already accumulated. Another big factor was that many of the
mountain slopes were nearly treeless because they've been hit by forest fires and clear-cut
by forestry companies over the previous summers. This created relatively smooth and
obstruction-free surfaces in already-avalanche-prone areas. When the incident occurred as well, thunder was often cited as a major contributor
to the avalanche. But these days, experts disagree on whether
thunder alone can trigger an avalanche. But, either way, from several firsthand accounts, it is clear that there was a huge thunderclap
just before the avalanche began. Several months later, in October of the same year, the Great Northern Railway began a multiyear
project, building dozens of concrete snowsheds along particularly susceptible portions
of track between Wellington and Scenic. Later that month, the company changed the
town's name from "Wellington" to "Tye" in an effort to distance itself from the incident. However, there was another incident
just six years later in late January of 1916. This time, eight Great Northern passengers
were killed while traveling, when another Windy Mountain avalanche
pushed the train off the tracks and down a 100-foot ravine. Eventually, the town of Tye was abandoned in 1929 when a second Cascade Tunnel that didn't
pass through the town became operational. These days, it's a popular attraction
for local hikers and history enthusiasts, and one of the original snowsheds
still sits abandoned there to this day. On the afternoon of Saturday,
September 22nd, 1934, Wrexham AFC was scheduled to play
their Welsh rivals, the Tranmere Rovers. Wrexham AFC is a soccer team,
and then oldest team in Wales, and the third oldest professional
soccer club in the world. And this match against the Tranmere Rovers was
an important event to the people of Wrexham. Despite them playing one of the lower leagues
of the English soccer system, that didn't stop them from having a large
and loyal fan base in their hometown. Watching them play at home
in the racecourse ground was a new religious experience
for the people of Wrexham. When they were up against another Welsh team, every man in town wanted to be watching
and cheering the team on. The problem was that Wrexham was a mining town. More than a quarter of the men who lived in the town
worked at the Gresford Colliery, and many more worked in other mines or in shops
and businesses that relied on the coal miners. In addition, miners at the time worked
in shifts - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - and that meant many of them would be underground
when the game was being played. So, they came up with a workaround. If everyone who was supposed to be working
on Saturday worked the night shift on Friday, they could get their hours in and not miss the game. So as the night shift started on Friday the 21st,
nearly 500 men went down into the pit at once, which was many more than usual. Then, more than half head into a part
of the mine known as Dennis. There were two main shafts of the Gresford mine. One was named Martin, and the other
was named Dennis. The Dennis shaft was 2,264 feet,
or 690 meters deep, and it was split into different areas or districts. Some of these accessed the main coal seam, and the others mined coal from
separate veins and offshoots. Of the two shafts, Dennis was the least popular
with the miners for several reasons, with the main one being the air quality. The coal in some parts of Dennis
was very dry and produced a lot of gases. In fact, the mining company even
pumped some of it out to be used as a household gas in town. In addition, the ventilation that was in place didn't
quite do the job of removing all the gas, so breathing could be difficult, and it could get
far too hot in some areas. By 1934, measurements were supposed to be taken
regularly at different points of the mine, but unfortunately, not everywhere
was correctly measured, and the gas would build up in the areas
the inspectors missed. And beyond just the air quality, there were
some other issues too. Usually, there was only one way in
and out of each district. By law, there was supposed to be two, so the workers could get out through
the other if one got blocked. The support beams put in to shorten the route were also never as sturdy as they
should have been. However, at the time, miners were
in no place to argue, so for the most part, they simply kept
their heads down and got to work. That is, until the morning before the football match. Some workers had noticed a weird smell
for a couple of days before the 21st. Weirdly, it wasn't the usual smell of gas; it was more like a dead mouse,
or as one of the miners described it, "as if someone had their pants down." There'd also been a bit of spontaneous smoke, but that often happened when coal dust
was kicked around, so they ignored it. Either way, by then, it was only a matter of time. At 2 am on September 22nd,
there was a sudden explosion 2 miles underground in the Dennis shaft. This blast was so big that it ripped through
the main seam in Dennis and literally lit the air on fire. This explosion set off detectors in the mine
which transmitted right to the local police. They then sent almost every officer they had, and shortly after that, in addition to them,
firefighters, doctors, nurses, and men from neighboring mines rushed
to the scene to see if they could help. The men not in the Dennis shaft
got out as fast as they could, and at first, people arriving at the scene thought only 111
people had been trapped under the ground. Initially, they didn't know about the soccer match
or the larger than average workforce. Later, when they counted how many mining
lamps had been checked out, they realized in horror that at least double
that amount were stuck. Before long, the roads to the pit
was lined with cars, and more than 150 volunteers were making
their way over to do what they could. The rain was coming down hard
that morning, but it didn't matter. The mine was the heart of their community;
they had to help. As the men continued pouring out, the miner's wives
stood around the pit entrance, asking anyone who came out
if they'd seen their loved ones. Some were lucky and recognized familiar faces, but many would never see
who they were looking for. Shortly after the explosion, the fire service
couldn't do anything but stand by and watch. The fires were too hot and too deep
for them to reach. Then, finally, two hours after the initial explosion, a manager from a nearby colliery
went in as far as possible with a small team. There, they found the first bodies of six miners who had been killed instantly by the explosion,
and got them to the surface. Then 30 minutes later, a rescue team began
to fight back the flames using extinguishers. Three hours after that,
18 miners from a nearby mine went down and descended into the heat and smoke, but horrifyingly, there was a miscommunication. An order to avoid a district was mistaken
for an order to enter, and these men were only wearing
a basic breathing apparatus. They were, however, carrying a canary
in a cage to check for carbon monoxide. When this canary died, as soon as
they entered the district, the team leader realized there was a problem,
and ordered everyone to move back. As they did, and in the rush, two men started to panic,
ripping off their nose clips, and collapsing. Then a third man fell, and a final man
took his arms and tried to drag him out, but before long, he was also struggling. Another rescue team eventually pulled all four out,
but unfortunately, only the final man survived. By then, it was clear that no one could
be alive in that area of the mine, so they focused on another district. But as they continued along, they found that
there were still fires actively going, making it impossible to mount a rescue. The firefighters went in again to try
to extinguish the flames, but they struggled in vain for another 40 hours. No matter how hard they tried to fight the fires,
they just seemed to get larger. Even worse, more explosions
were triggered randomly, and even the main tunnels started
to fill with carbon monoxide. So, after the rescuers had done everything they could, it was clear no one else could have survived. In the end, only 11 bodies were recovered
from the mine, and three of those were part of the rescue team. Because of how little progress they'd made
and how dangerous a rescue would be, it was eventually decided they couldn't risk
the lives of anyone else. On Monday the 24th of September, the mine entrance
was sealed, turning it into a great tomb. By then, the hundreds who turned up had left, and the yard outside the shaft was deserted,
except for a few police officers. Meanwhile, the remaining workers
hauled chunks of timber, sand, and cement to the tunnel entrance
to seal it forever. Or at least, that's what they'd hoped. The following day at 1:45 pm, the police
watching the mine, heard a sudden thud. They then ran to the entrance to find one
of the workers lying on the ground, badly hurt. Another explosion had ripped apart
the heavy concrete and wooden ceiling they'd put in place to shore up the tunnel,
essentially blowing the entrance cover apart. A chunk of this debris then flew through
the air, hitting the worker. He was taken to the hospital, but unfortunately
died of his injuries. That worker was the last person
to lose their life at Gresford Colliery. The mine was then resealed with the
fires continuing deep in the tunnels. There was at least one more explosion
in the days following, but thankfully, no one else was hurt. Several months later, the entrance was finally unsealed
once again to try to recover more bodies. In the meantime, the owners of the colliery
had fed a pipe into the part of the mine where the men were trapped so they could
check how toxic the air was. The hope was that they could seal
the area where the explosion happened, and then a few months later, when the fires
had died down and the air had cleared, they could resume mining in the rest
of the coal pit after extracting the bodies. By March of 1935, a team went in
and created a series of openings to let more fresh air into the Dennis shaft. Then in May of that year, another team
managed to recover the body of a missing member of the rescue team. By July, they made it another 700 yards further in and made the tunnels close to the entrance
safe enough for mining to resume. For months afterward, they moved slowly through
the mine, accessing more of the seam. This time, at every step, they were followed
by inspectors who took air samples. In the aftermath, the tragedy
had made national news and risen all the way up to a parliamentary inquiry. This meant that every step the mine operators
took was under intense scrutiny. However, eventually, the inspectors decided
it was just too toxic to go any deeper. The bodies of 266 miners remain underground, and the cause of the explosion
has never been determined. Located in South Central Wales,
the Merthyr Vale Colliery, or Coal Mine, had been producing coal since 1875. Almost 100 years later, demand for coal
began dropping in the 1960s, but even then, the mine employed
nearly 8,000 miners who produced thousands of tons of coal
and waste, or spoil, every day. This spoil is a byproduct of the mining process. As was the case with nearly all mines, this spoil
was deposited in large mounds called tips. When one tip got too big, another one
was simply started nearby. At the Merthyr Vale Colliery,
Tip #7 began growing in 1958, and just a few years later, it contained hundreds
of thousands of cubic yards of spoil that towered more than a hundred feet
over the ground below. No one knows exactly how much it weighed, but it may have been as much as 500,000 tons
or 1 billion pounds. Now, this wasn't any larger than
many tips at other Welsh mines, but crucially, the ones at Merthyr Vale were
positioned on hillsides instead of flat ground. In addition, Tip #7
sat on a porous patch of earth under which there were a
number of natural springs. This was prohibited by the National Coal Board's
very own regulations, which was ironic, considering that the NCB owned
and operated the Merthyr Vale Colliery. But even more surprisingly, tip number seven
sat directly above the town of Aberfan, and two schools with more than 300 students
between them in the valley below. Eventually, the tip grew so large that concerned
residents, local officials, engineers, and geologists began voicing their concerns
to mine executives and NCB officials. During the first three weeks of October of 1966, South Central Wales was hit with
nearly seven inches of rain. This was roughly 11 percent of what was typically
received annually in just a three-week span. In addition, the spoil had already absorbed
significant amounts of water from the springs beneath, and by then, it was more than twice
as heavy as the dry spoil had been. Eventually, this mass became so unstable
that a large portion of Tip #7 slid approximately 10 feet down the hill
it sat on toward the city, between the evening of October 20th
and the morning of the 21st. In addition to that, a large sinkhole had formed that swallowed much of the rail line
that fared waste from the mine to the tip. However, both the movement and
sinkhole weren't discovered until approximately 7:30
on the morning of the 21st, when miners began to arrive for their shifts. With an impending tragedy on their hands,
one worker ran to the office and returned with his supervisor a few minutes later. Because the weather showed no signs of letting up, he decided that no additional waste material would be
added to Tip #7 that day, and that a new tip would be established as soon as
a suitable location could be found. By then, the spoil was still relatively solid, and the true gravity of what was about
to happen wasn't fully realized. At about 9:15 am, a 20-foot-high portion of the
tip broke away and began flowing like molasses down the slope toward
Aberfan at about 15 miles an hour. To the people in the village that morning,
this wall of blackish gray spoil sounded like the roll of distant thunder
or a plane passing overhead. The spoil then continued to gather momentum, and it
first slid hundreds of yards down the hill, flattening two farmhouses and the
people inside as it went. Next, it crossed the canal that ran through
the village and severed two water mains that were buried in the embankment
beside some railroad tracks. This then exacerbated the problem by adding millions of gallons of water
to the already-liquid slurry, and by then, the flowing mass had picked up tons
of additional debris like mud, rocks, and trees. As this was happening, hundreds of students
at the schools below sat quietly at their desks, waiting for their teachers to finish taking attendance. Soon enough, everyone felt the ground shaking
and the rumbling above them. Then, in an instant, the slurry hit the building, breaking right through the doors,
shattering windows, and in a matter of seconds, filling up the
classrooms with the thick slurry. As it did, pipes burst, walls buckled, and students screamed as the school
was overtaken by the mass. One cafeteria worker saved five students by using her own body as a shield
against the rising spoil. In another selfless act, a headmaster
tried to give 34 students some protection behind the classroom's
portable backboard. Sadly, everyone in that classroom didn't make it. Within 10 minutes, nearly two dozen homes
around the school were also leveled as panicked survivors
poured into the streets. Police received the first emergency call
10 minutes later at 9:25 am. Shortly after, the spoil stopped flowing, and when
it did, the whole town went silent. And in some parts of the village, the mounds
of spoil were nearly 30-feet-tall. Many streets and lanes were totally impassable, but this didn't stop villagers and rescuers
from descending on the schools. About 15 minutes later, dozens of fathers who'd
been working at the mine began arriving as well, and because of their experience, they directed
the rescue effort early on. Even still, in the early going, everyone dug
frantically with their hands and anything else they could find nearby. This digging was unfortunately painstakingly slow, and occasionally, sounds could be heard
from somewhere in the slurry. Later, bulldozers and excavators
began arriving at the schools, but again, the precarious nature of the spoil meant
that they had to be used extremely carefully. As the day continued, dozens of students
and teachers were uncovered, and tragically, many of them didn't survive. The first survivors began arriving at local hospitals
at 10 am the day of the accident, and the search continued throughout
the day and into the next, but no more survivors were found
after just 11 am the next morning. In the end, in total, 144 lives were lost -
of which, 116 of those were students. In a town of only 5,000 people at the time, this was just under 3 percent
of everyone who lived there. In the wake of the tragedy, a tribunal was convened
to figure out what exactly happened, and the first public meeting was held
on November 2nd, 1966. For months afterward, the site was examined,
there was witness testimony, and a thorough investigation was performed
to determine the cause of the disaster. The tribunal issued its final report
in early August 1967, and it found that the NCB's
indifference and inaction were largely responsible for the disaster,
that it was entirely preventable, and that it had been caused by ignorance
and incompetence instead of willful malice. In fact, during his testimony, the Aberfan MP even
admitted that he'd always had suspicions that the tip would slide, and that if it did,
it might reach the village. However, he didn't say anything
because he was concerned about the economic impacts if the mine was closed. In the end, only nine NCB employees were censured,
and nobody was ever prosecuted. Unsurprisingly, many people thought that the
tribunal's findings were too lax, considering the devastating nature of the disaster. Several years later, in 1974, the construction
of the Aberfan Memorial Garden was completed on what were once
the grounds of the school below the hillside. By then, only 600 miners remained
at the Merthyr Vale Colliery. And between competition and
worsening economic conditions, it finally closed for good in the summer of 1989. If you made it this far, thanks so much for watching. A series focusing on disasters
has been requested for some time, and so I want to make at least one compilation
featuring several of the incidents, which are too short to make into a full-length video. If this series continues, the goal will be to feature some of the more intricate and
complex disasters in history. So let me know if this is something
you'd like to see more of, and if there are some particularly fascinating disasters
that you think might fit the series, feel free to submit them to the form
found in the description. And hopefully, I will see you in the next one.
