Gleision - The Families' Stories Week In Week Out

HELICOPTER ENGINE ROARS. I knew there was something wrong. Instinct,

I think it's called, isn't it? really couldn't believe it. He sets

off for work in the morning and you expect them home. One bloke said to

me the other day, "It's not the mountain's fault. It's what's in

He looked at us and said, "There's no way I can say this other than

really sorry, but we have found a body". And the whole place just

Rescuers have already attempted one route and are trying a second route

to reach the men. It's feared they could be trapped in old workings...

There has been an in-rush of water into the mine. We're in the process

of removing that water. A year ago, the world waited and

prayed for better news from Gleision Colliery, as rescuers

attempted to reach four miners who were trapped underground here.

Tonight, the families have spoken to us about their experience, their

fears, their grief, and the questions that remain to be

The trapped men were Garry Jenkins, Philip Hill, Charles Breslin and

David Powell. There was every hope they would be rescued from the

David Powell's son helped raise to the alarm. He said, "Tell Mammy to

come up the Community Centre". The boys ran up the mountain then, to

see if they could do anything. David Powell had just turned 50. He

was a father of four and a grandfather who loved mining.

told him many times to stop, but, no, kept on going. He was happy

going to work with bad knees, bad elbows, and smiling coming back. He

was just wonderful. He did everything for us and he didn't

want anything back. The miners are located approximately 90 metres

underground down a 250-metre route into the mine. There are numerous

little tunnels, old workings, which all potentially have got air

The rescue operation was being co- ordinated from the nearby Rhos

Community Centre. The families gathered inside as the press

Everybody was just staring at each other. Obviously I wanted him back.

In my heart, I knew there was something wrong after seeing the

rescue miners with their faces. year-old Garry Jenkins had only

worked at Gleision for a few weeks. His partner, Sarah Hanson, rushed

to the Community Centre. I can remember pulling up outside the

Community Centre and there was police ambulances and things, and

it was a shock. At that point, nobody really knew. I didn't really

understand how bad it was up there at that point so I was quite

positive, thinking, "They will get Cos nobody really knew, cos we were

in a little bubble in there. Garry lived with Sarah and her three sons

in Lower Cwmtwrch. He was proud to be a miner. He did enjoy it up

there. All the banter with the other boys. He'd go off to work, he

used to pick them all up, then he'd come home, dirty feet. He never

moaned about it or anything. He was just happy to go up there and do

Just the evening before Alex Jenkins, Garry's son, was with him

at rugby training. Alex heard his dad was trapped when he was in

school the next day. In school, that lesson we were learning about

mining and how it's a Welsh heritage and how it's killed so

many people but how many people's kept alive. I was looking at my

phone under the table. I read a text. I went to the office. My

mother's there and she took me into one of the rooms and sat me down

and told me Dad's been in an accident. Cos I knew mining is a

dangerous thing. But it's so safe at the same time, I thought he was

going to be all right. 62-year-old Charles Breslin was just two months

off his retirement. But he wanted money to finish work on the house

he'd been building for his wife, Mavis, and their disabled daughter,

Cheryl-Ann. We built this house. It's supposed to be for us to

retire in so we could enjoy the rest of our lives. I couldn't

believe it. To begin with, I thought, "No, they got it wrong".

Her last memory of Charles was of the night before. It was my

birthday. He had come back from the club with a bottle of wine. I said,

is that my birthday present? He said, I will pay for you and a

friend to go for a meal. But news broke the day after my birthday, so

we didn't go for that meal. All the way down in the car I was praying,

I was saying, "I don't care if he's paralysed, just as long as I can

have him home, but no... At first, Charles' brothers, both ex-miners,

thought he'd survive. He was experienced and renowned for his

strength. Hard work was his name. Much stronger than I am. I will

never fit into his shoes. Never ever. He could move a mountain. He

would be laying on his back in water, shovelling coal, filling

drams doing repairs, in only a few feet of height. He loved it and

never moaned he wanted a good life for his family. And he was prepared

to work for the money. With growing interest from around the world,

back at the Community Centre, all the families could do inside was

wait. Sat in that place was horrendous. One of the worst

moments of my life. You always live in hope, but deep down I just had a

gut feeling that this wouldn't be The water - once they said the

amount of water... I had friends there, friends, people belonging to

me, working on the rescue. When we saw the pipes, you knew it was hard.

They were up against it. The Mines Rescue Service, with specialist

skills and equipment, led the search. We arrived at the mine.

From the entrance, it looked like a private mine, a small mine level.

No signs of any incidents at all. You had to go well into the mine to

get to the water. It was just a body of water, black slurry. Apart

from the initial rescue, it was clearing out many thousands of

litres of water which had flowed into the mine. But of course, with

water you don't know how big the body was, so you could have been

For Philip Hill's family, the news was the latest in a series of

tragedies. His mother and son had died months earlier. That was

difficult for Phil, to lose his mum so suddenly, and then his son. To

see him from the character he was to looking so empty and broken. It

was very difficult. Philip had been a Mines Rescue Volunteer. But he'd

left the industry and worked as carer. Phil said he wanted to start

over at Gleision. Grandfather said, "Oh, leave mining alone, but he

said, "It's what I love, Dad. His CV was recently written. In his

words were, "I have given 20 years to the mining industry. It's what I

love and I've got another 20 years to give". Gleision was a wet mine,

dug deep into the hills above Godrergraig. It needed constant

pumping. A handful of miners worked in a warren of tunnels, some in use,

some very old. Three miners had managed to escape. One of them, the

manager, Malcom Fyfield, was seriously injured. He'd got out

through a mineshaft. Rescuers knew the trapped men. At the Community

Centre, a team of Police Liaison Officers were shielding the

families from the media. We as Family Liaison Officers were trying

to protect our families from going outside because everybody was there.

There were cameras, Sky News, everybody was there. As the hours

went on, you just knew this is going everywhere and getting bigger.

To begin with, when we first went in it was very much four isolated,

scared families in the four corners of the centre. There was a lot of

conversation and tears and panic, but everybody stopped and you could

hear a pin drop. Every hour we had an update from head of the fires,

mines service and mines rescue when they came in and closed the door.

Every creak of the door my son Korie said, cos they were black,

helmets, "Daddy's here", but it I remember coming home, came home

for a shower, and as I walked through the back door his

cigarettes and things were on the table. First I thought, "He's got

out and come home". And then you realise, no, he hasn't. Cheryl and

I sat up all night watching the TV, hoping every different bulletin,

thinking, "Surely by now they've got through?" Did she realise that

the mine that was being talked about was the mine where her father

worked? Yes, cos his photo was coming up at every interval. At

that time we were numb more than anything, just hoping, thinking,

"The longer it goes on, no bad news could be good news". Everybody from

emergency to the ladies helping out. All the families had had a

conversation. If the Chile miners could come out after all that,

those days turning into months, you know we'll get these boys out.

There was so much hope, such a miraculous story, what happened

with them. But Gleision was a world away from Chile. Overnight during

the search rescue operation... Which is ongoing. A miner has been

found. He is deceased. We are not in a position to recover him,

therefore do not know the ID of that person. The news had already

been broken to families inside the Community Centre. I can still see

his face. He took his hat off and said, "Can I have your attention?"

He closed the doors and windows and said, "There's no way I can say

this other than we're really sorry. We've found a body". The whole

place just collapsed. Everybody was in shock. Screams, tears hugs,

questions about "who is it?" Do we know which one it is? It was so

unreal. Totally unreal. What I couldn't understand, I do now, but

why families were informed that one miner had been killed but they

didn't name him. I just thought, "Why not wait till they knew who he

was so you're not upsetting four families instead of one?" From the

outset, police decided the families had to be kept fully informed of

any developments. They didn't want them finding out from the community.

That task fell to the liaison officers. Four families in the

Community Centre, and we don't know how long this is going to be but

one of us is going to have to say to our family, "I am really, really

sorry but the miner we've brought out is your loved one". Detectives

from South Wales Police were brought in right from the beginning.

Their job to establish what had gone so wrong. The most poignant

moment for me, and difficult moment, was when the body of the first

miner was carried out by the Mines Rescue Service. I remember clearly

the lights from the miners' helmets coming up the drift, carrying the

bodies out of the mine. Everyone who was sat around stood up and

took off their hats as a mark of respect. There were tears. A very

sad moment. Grown men... Certainly tearful. Back at the Community

Centre, the families were told the It was horrendous watching the

inspector come in and walk up to that family, it was not a nice time.

I can remember her standing in front of me, grabbing my hand and I

knew then it was him. Then they took us into a different room to

tell us it was him they had found. Garry's son, who lives with his mum,

was waiting for news at his grandparents' house. My mind was in

a place that the chances are he had passed. When the news came, I cried

a bit, I already knew myself. After I knew there was water involved, I

knew water and mines don't mix. more caring person, you could meet.

He wouldn't go without work. He promised to get me something one

Christmas and washed windows because he was out of work, just to

pay for a present. He would have worked no matter what. I can't

blame him for going down there - it's something that's in our family

and always will be. The wait for more news went on and on. It was

difficult in that community centre. The other families were devastated,

maybe thinking, it's not mine but thinking, right there's still

another three in there. Charles Breslin, his wife had said he's as

strong as an ox and can swim like a fish and Charles will get these

boys out. Unfortunately at 12.15 this afternoon, we located a second

miner. This time they had found David Powell. My liaison said that

he'd gone. That was the killer. When they said that, my whole life

had gone. The love of my life I have lost forever. I don't know how

to cope, it's a year and I should be coping but it gets worse. It's

getting worse, not better. Then more bad news, the discovery of

Phillip Hill. You stop and you think, did they panic, did they

know, did they suffer? It becomes painful when you think about what

they went through. You tried to think about why has this happened.

How did this happen? Try to build up a picture of the four miners

going into the mine, to do their day's work, it's that which haunts

me. Thinking Philip was probably singing along in his car, into work

he went. And what on earth happened then and when you see all the pain

and tears left behind for Phillip's children, you can't believe it's

happened. 36 hours after the rescue began, the last family heard the

news they had feared. I went back outside, another phone call and it

was Sian - we've found the last of the miners. Mavis said to me, is he

dead? I said, yes, I'm very, so sorry. My world collapsed,

everything we'd worked for and had together goneI was numb for days

and days. It was horrific because they've lived that death four times.

I stayed with them a while after that, but what do you say? I wasn't

able to bring the words out for a long time. You do know, I said,

that your father's been killed, do you understand what that means, you

know what that means? She said, yes, and I said, you won't be seeing him

anymore, and she understood that. One by one the bodies were removed

from the mine. My wife's friend's son was on the Mines Rescue and

carried my brother out - only a young lad from the same village

that knew him. How has it affected those people? Seen here for the

first time, these pictures show what the Mines Rescue Service faced

- tonnes of silt and debris had to be dug out by hand as they made

Gleision safe enough for investigators to re-enter. From the

outset, we had to consider that an act of negligence may have had been

behind this tragedy, that was certainly my focus. There were

tonnes of debris and absolute devastation left underground and we

relied on our colleagues HSE and MRS to mine their way back through

on our behalf. It took almost two weeks of hard and difficult work to

clear the tunnel. As a result of what we discovered in those early

days, we made decision that a full scale criminal investigation would

be required. As the site became a crime scene in the valley below,

the families were planning funerals. I asked the undertaker if I could

walk the coffin to the grave, because Dad was there when I came

into the world, so I thought I wanted to be there when he gets

taken out. I didn't know most of the faces but the faces, they knew

dad. And dad probably knew all of them. We had the service up in St

David's and my son was walking in front - I was proud of him. Then we

went to bury him up in Godregraig, opposite the mine. That's all you

could see, the rescue team in a line flashing their torches - so

proud, absolutely proud. families and the community will

always be overshadowed by what happened on at Gleision. One bloke

said to me the other day, it's not the mountain's fault - it's what's

in the mountain. I passed it once or twice, put the window down and

screamed at it. It's there isn't it - you can't move it but it took

your best friend. Prince Charles became patron of the memorial fund

for the miners' families. More than �1 million has been raised

worldwide. But what the families still need are answers to questions

about what happened on September 15 last year. Somewhere in your life

you are going to try and come to terms with that but the wounds heal

but they leave terrible scars. But you need to try to get your head

round it. Still so many unanswered questions about how this possibly

could have happened and to ruin four lives and four families.

generations of Welsh mining communities have learned to live

with tragedy. This was the first of the 21 century. The hope must be

that Gleision will be the last My objective from the outset was to

fully understand events which led to this tragedy and understand

factually what caused this to happen. This has been a year-long

investigation and I feel that we have achieved it and we've

transferred a file to the CPS and they are considering the evidence

gathered and we await the CPS decision as to what the future

holds. The mine manager Malcolm Fyfield has been arrested and

bailed on suspicion of causing manslaughter through gross

negligence. The mine remains Closed, its license has been revoked. A

year since hope turned despair at Gleision - the families live with

the legacy as best they can. Charles Breslin didn't live long

enough enjoy his dream home. If we hadn't built this house, he

wouldn't have been working but he needed money to finish the driveway

and some others and landscaping. The fact I really wanted his house,

I do feel guilt. Everything we do, I keep thinking he should be here,

if we go on a holiday, he should be with us. My heart is empty, my

whole body is empty. I get up in the morning, he's in the house and

I talk to him, tell him I love him, tell him to come back. One day I

will be with him again - I used to be frightened to die. I'm not

anymore because I will be with him again. One day. What happened that

day has obviously devastated such a lot of people and support has been

lovely, so many kind people, but it would be nicer if none of us had to

do this. When I see me, I can also see the things people note of him.

Sometimes it's upsetting but it's reassuring to think he's there

laughing at me somewhere. So when you're kicking that ball and making

a mess of it. Then I also hear him saying when I do something good,

saying, well done. Saying, go on boy. Yes. Phillip used to say the

best times he had in life were underground. He was probably down