Gleision: How the events of the mining disaster unfolded

The tragedy at Gleision was the worst mining disaster in the UK for more than thirty years.

Four men were tragically killed in the Gleision drift mine in Neath Port Talbot on 15 September 2011.

Philip Hill, 44, Charles Breslin, 62, David Powell, 50 and 39-year-old Garry Jenkins, drowned when they were attempting to connect two parts of the Gleision mine together using dynamite.

On Friday, the families' barrister will take their fight to Swansea Coroner's Court to find out if they will get a full long-awaited inquest.

• What happened on 15 September 2011?

Seven miners were working on an operation in the colliery to increase air circulation.

Following a blast into a separate disused flooded mine, the tunnel in which they were working began to fill with water.

The controlled explosion led to 650,000 gallons of water being unleashed inside the mine.

Three miners escaped but the others were trapped 90 metres underground.A major search and rescue operation began to try and rescue the trapped miners, but they were found dead the following day.

Following the disaster, experts later discovered that enough water to fill an Olympic swimming pool rushed into the area the men were working in. It was travelling at 21mph and a rate of 1,500 litres per second.

• Has anyone been prosecuted for disaster?

Malcom Fyfield, the boss of the the Gleision Colliery at the time, was later cleared of gross negligence manslaughter following a three-month trial.

During that trial, prosecutors at Swansea Crown Court said that Mr Fyfield, should not have allowed his workers to dig towards an area where underground water was present.

However, he said he had carried out three safety inspections on the eve of the disaster on 15 September 2011.

• What do the victims family say?

Nobody has been convicted for the failings of that tragic day, something the families of the victims have been calling for.

Last year, on the tenth the anniversary of his father Garry Jenkins' death, Alex Jenkins told ITV News he wanted an inquest to help the families understand what led to their relatives' deaths.

He said: ''I believe an inquest is needed to further each of our understandings of the events leading up to and the event itself.

"Also the handling of the event in the weeks and months later, how all of that was dealt with.

"I believe an inquest would help us understand that in a much more understandable way."