After 30 years trapped in the nightmare of Aberfan, the healing process has begun

The struggle to come to terms with the Aberfan disaster has taken Gaynor Madgwick 30 years. She was eight when the massive tip of coal waste towering over the South Wales village collapsed. Pantglas School was buried under thousands of tons of evil-smelling black slurry.

It was a scene from Dante's Inferno as hundreds of rescuers clawed away at the detritus of a century's mining. Gaynor was trapped with severe leg and hip injuries and she still recalls: "It was a horrible nightmare. Bodies lay crushed and buried. I was too dazed to scream or do anything."

Her grandfather was among the rescuers who eventually found her.

Her brother Carl, aged seven, and sister Marilyn, 10, died - as did another 114 children and 28 adults.

It has been a long march back. But yesterday the community centre at Aberfan, a typical valleys' village five miles from Merthyr Tydfil, was packed for the launch of her book Struggling Out Of The Darkness and plans for ceremonies to mark the 30th anniversary of the tragedy, which falls on 21 October, were discussed.

The book is, in the truest sense, a story of courage. After months spent in hospital after the disaster and attempts to block out memories of the disaster Ms Madgwick began to write in her early teens. The manuscript languished for nearly 20 years. Then five years ago she steeled herself to complete the task.

The divorced mother of three children - James 17, Ben 15 and Cassandra nine - Gaynor, slim and fair-haired, typifies the resilience of a community still scarred by the events of 30 years ago.

"I hope the book will help other survivors, like the people of Dunblane. It takes a long, long time to get the fears and frustrations out of the system. Writing the book was my way of healing" she said.

She regularly visits the hillside cemetery where rows of arched marble headstones stand sentinel over the village, a stark reminder of the price paid for keeping a nation warm and the wheels of industry turning.

Merthyr Vale colliery, the pit around which Aberfan was built, closed six years ago with the loss of 400 jobs. The village is bypassed well out of sight of motorists speeding to the honeypot that is Cardiff. A few miles up the valley a factory is being built by a Korean manufacturer of earth moving equipment.

Change may be in the air but the old verities of community and mutual help which inform Struggling Out Of The Darkness are fighting back.