As so often, it wasn't the despair that at first devastated. Not at first. It was the hope. Hope that had sprung almost certainly, if subconsciously, from last autumn in the Atacama desert, when 33 long-trapped Chilean miners were pulled to safety in the world's feelgood event of 2010.

The slow, anguished extinguishing of that hope, the sombre voices tolling ever-worse news every few hours on Friday, is the story of the Gleision disaster.

The deaths, the grim sudden deaths in an onrush of old, cold, sludgy water, are bad enough, but they were quick. The fractious angst for the families as Friday progressed was something else. According to Peter Hain, the local MP, who had been speaking to them for much of that day, after news of the fourth body was announced they simply "fled" the community centre in Rhos. On Saturday Rhos lay near-silent. Desultory to-camera pieces from the media stragglers were about the only signs of life. Once hope is gone, there is retreat.

Hain was throughout, he told the Observer, a reluctant pessimist. "Even on Thursday night, I had the feeling this didn't look good. There was just … something. I hope I'm not just being wise after the event: I was gloomy throughout. I had a glimmer of more hope at midday when it was reported that the oxygen levels looked good, there was no methane, but … still.

"And I'd actually said, after one of the conferences on the Thursday night, that the police and emergency services were communicating such passion that it may give false hope: people would read that as conviction of success. It wasn't, and nothing was, their fault: they were simply conveying a true and professional determination. I'd been escorted at one stage up there, to the mouth of the mine, and was simply astonished not just at the number of emergency workers but their commitment. I managed to speak to one, and he said: 'But don't you understand, this is my passion. It is my job, my determination, to get these men out'."

They didn't. And now it turns out that they could not have, not alive anyway, although perhaps the sight of so many big filthy knackered men going back again and again into a swampy burrow fraught with new menace,, 12 hours a stint, gave some solace to those slowly losing hope: the stoic bravery of our specialist emergency teams is one of the few good things to emerge from this week in Swansea, and an image that will linger.

But the hope had gone by early evening on Friday, and its loss was obvious. In the bars that straddle and straggle the A4064, a filthy meander of an arterial route through shopping centres, which suddenly, gloriously, trips into the foothills of the Swansea Valley proper – a place of dappled sun and babbled brooks and, all but hidden on one hillside, a small drift-mine – there was a strange mood abroad. People were getting on with getting drunk. In three places, at least, however, the raucousness stopped for the news bulletins. Older patrons listened intently; younger ones were told to pipe down. "I don't know how they could do it," half-whispered Al, 19, as he followed the screen. "That space, that dark. I suppose at least they had a job."

Around in the snugger of the bars, old Mary had been following the telly all day, far more than the younger generations. "There's still something about the mines, and the young people don't seem to know it. Not their fault probably. We grew up with the last of them, or almost the last of them. And then … this. Brave men and probably proud. I think I knew this morning, when they pulled the first one out."

I was told that David Powell, known as Dai Bull, one of those who died, took fine pride in the workings of the Gleision pit, and would wander up on days off – the tiny half-hidden entrance, past hedgerows and holly, and horses in fieldsand, of course in winter, snow, was visible from his house below – to check pumps, valves, safety, sumps, and the manageability of flowing water within a hillside.

This was not a shambles of a mine. Safety measures, particularly from gas, are a world away from thoseVictorian/Edwardian horrors. But guessing hidden hillside water movements is famously unpredictable. Powell's son escaped, and spent the day comforting other relatives. Whether he goes, ever, back into a pit … whether drift-mines can continue, is a question being asked by some who don't really know. "I am very resistant," insists Hain, "to what seems to be becoming a bit of a media issue at the moment, which is: should these mines be closed? I have between 200 and 300 in my constituency doing this, and it's a well-paying job, they can earn up to £30,000, a huge wage for these parts, and they have justified pride, and it's in an area where there can be 10 people chasing one job.

"So, if a man chooses to do this, I'd rather he was doing it in my constituency, with proper safety standards, despite what has just happened, rather than some unregulated part of the world fraught with even more danger."

He dismissed instantly, as a "red herring", some newish allegations about disturbance of water tables by a controversial pipeline (built when he was Welsh secretary) through, essentially, most of his country east from Milford Haven – "I was involved with all that, know all about it, and it's not to blame" – and has his own theories about Thursday's disaster, but will wait a little, at least while inquiries continue, to reveal them.

For the families the inquiry takes second place. They have their men to bury and tears to shed. The family of Phillip Hill went to the mine to pay their respects. They laid their own floral tributes and paused for a few moments, comforting each other in their grief.

Hill's daughter, Kyla, left a bunch of flowers with a card, which said: "Hi dad, I love and miss you forever."

Another card from the family said: "Thank you for being part of our lives. Our girls will be safe with me. Miss you always. Donna x Meg."

Among the other people leaving tributes to the four men were the widow and daughters of a miner also killed underground. On a card they wrote: "To the families of miners lost. May you find courage and strength over the coming days, months and years ahead. Our sincere sympathy and our thoughts are with you. From the wife and daughters of Alan Jones (killed in Blaenant Colliery, Crynant, 1976)."