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Of these, 109 children mostly aged between
seven and ten years old, were killed in the
primary school, together with five of their
teachers. It is a mercy that lessons in the
secondary school did not start until 9:30,
meaning that many of those children were still
walking towards the building at the time of
the landslide. The eye-witnesses report that
when the landslide stopped there was complete
silence: for example a local hairdresser who
witnessed the landslide reported that “In that
silence you couldn’t hear a bird or a child”.
Immediately people flooded into the area from
far and wide to try to save the victims buried
by the landslide, including miners from the
colliery. News footage from that day shows
numerous pit workers in their colliery helmets
digging at the s