'Loudest noise in three decades'

STUDENT FILMS MOMENT HUGE ROCKFACE COLLAPSES NEAR WALKERS AT SLATE QUARRY

- By ANDREW FORGRAVE Countryside and Tourism Editor [e-mail]

A STUDENT artist has described the gut wrenching moment a huge quarry wall collapsed, sending tonnes of rock and slate thundering towards him.

By chance Aran Jones, 21, caught the dramatic incident on camera at Dinorwig slate quarry, Gwynedd.

He kept filming while others bolted from the area, belatedly joining them as a giant dust cloud billowed into the sky, clearly visible from the village of Llanberis below. “If there hadn't been a large pit beneath the rockface, we could have been in trouble,” he said.

Rockfalls are periodically reported at the quarry, once the world’s second largest slate mine. But local people said the noise made by Wednesday's incident was the largest they'd heard in more than three decades.

The collapse was a sobering reminder of the dangers of a site that's seen surging number of visitors in recent years. For some people, it also showed the bravery of quarry workers who reshaped a mountain above Llyn Peris, often with the most rudimentary of tools.