Rescuers discovered the last of the miners on Friday evening after two days spent searching the colliery’s many tunnels.
Police immediately began an investigation into what led to the deaths of David Powell, 50, Phillip Hill, 45, Charles Breslin, 62, and Garry Jenkins, 39.
Peter Hain, the local MP for Neath and a former Welsh Secretary, spoke for the devastated community of Pontardawe, near Swansea.
“This is the one end that we all feared but hoped against hope would not happen,” he said. “We have seen extraordinary courage shown by the families right through the night in torturous hours of waiting, and then finding out first that one miner had been found and not knowing who it was, and then another.
“We can’t even imagine what they have been through. This has been a stab right through the heart of the local community. There is a long tradition of mining here but nobody expected the tragedies that happened in past generations would happen today.”
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The dead men had been part of a small team of seven working a seam 300ft below ground in the Gleision colliery on Thursday morning, when they accidentally breached the walls of an adjacent mine that was flooded. Water rushed in, blocking the exit of four of the men and forcing the others to scramble to safety.
After the alarm was sounded, more than 50 rescue workers headed to the hillside to try to bring the others to the surface. At first, hopes were high after two of the survivors, who included the son of one of the trapped men, said they thought their workmates may have found sanctuary in refuges dotted along the mineshaft.
But as four powerful pumps removed water from the drift mine, which stretches about a third of a mile into the hillside, rescuers began to discover bodies in flooded tunnels. The first was found in the early hours of yesterday and the others throughout the day.
The tragedy began to unfold at about 9am on Thursday as the team of miners prepared to blast into the coal face to open up a new tunnel close to the floor of the pit. As the final preparations were made, five men took shelter around the corner in the lower tunnel to shield themselves from the blast.
Unknown to the men, they were just a few feet away from a long-forgotten chamber, packed with water after one of the wettest summers of recent years.
After the explosion a torrent of water broke through, sweeping into the lower shaft. One of the men, who was crouched close to the corner, was overwhelmed and almost certainly drowned instantly. Another began scrambling along the 50 yards towards the entrance to the main shaft. Just minutes from safety, he too was overwhelmed and swept into the bottom of the mine. A similar fate was thought to have befallen the two other dead men.
Of the five, only Malcolm Fyfield, the 46-year-old manager of the mine, survived, using his intimate knowledge of the tunnels to make his escape.
I think he has a lot of explaining 2 do 2 the other wives
It took him more than an hour to haul himself through long-forgotten mine workings to the surface. On his way he passed through rubble and sludge, breathing in noxious fumes. Last night, Mr Fyfield was in a medically induced coma due to a head injury and breathing the “bad air” during his escape.
Two other men, Mark Lloyd, 45, and Daniel Powell, 23, had earlier set off along the 820ft-long main shaft to fetch equipment intended to remove the rubble before the explosion.
The pair were making their way back in when they heard the charge of the water ahead of them. They turned and fled to safety before raising the alarm, prompting the biggest mine rescue operation in Britain for a generation.
For Daniel Powell the trauma was even more acute because his father, David, was among those trapped.
By the early hours of yesterday morning, the rescuers had pumped out enough water to reach the bottom of the mine where they discovered the first of the bodies. Still submerged, it took around 12 hours to be recovered.
Another body was discovered three hours later, with further discoveries at midday and in the early evening.
The ordeal for the families had been made worse by the fact that, as the news was relayed to them, they did not know who was dead and who was still being searched for. One friend said: “It is difficult to imagine the agonies they have been going through. It has been bad news after bad news.”
The deaths marked a return of the sort of mining disaster that it was thought had been consigned to history. The most recent significant mining accident in Britain was in March 1979 at Golborne colliery, near Wigan. Three men were killed there when a fireball shot 200 yards along a tunnel.
Last night the Archbishop of Wales, the Most Rev Dr Barry Morgan, said prayers would be said for the miners and their loved ones in churches across the country tomorrow. The archbishop, whose father worked as a miner, added: “There was a time when there were mines across Wales, and with them came accidents. We thought that those days were long gone, but sadly the events of the past two days showed that is sadly no longer the case.
“It is not an ideal occupation – my father was a miner and I knew first hand about what a tough and dangerous job it was, and still is. So, my heart goes out to the families of those killed in Gleision colliery.
“I hope they will gain some comfort from knowing that everyone in Wales is behind them. The whole community is heartbroken for them.”
