Robens decided to go ahead with his installation as the first Chancellor of the new University of Surrey before going to Aberfan, and he did not arrive until the evening of the Saturday following the day of the disaster, a blunder that was compounded by the actions of NCB staff, who falsely informed the Minister of Power, Richard Marsh, that Robens was at Aberfan. It was always his policy to send the most senior mining engineer to the scene of a disaster to coordinate rescue operations. Speaking to the media on the Sunday after the disaster, Robens was concerned that the initial shock and sorrow might give way to anger, possibly directed towards the men who worked at the top of the spoil heaps. To avoid this, he said that those men could not have foreseen what happened. A TV interview during which he made that comment proved to be unacceptable for broadcasting, owing to the atmospheric conditions; instead, the interviewer broadcast a paraphrase of the interview that wrongly made it seem that Robens had claimed that no one in the NCB could have foreseen the disaster. This was later taken by the Aberfan disaster enquiry to imply that the Board was contesting liability, notwithstanding the 19th-century case of "Rylands v Fletcher" which meant that the Board had absolute liability for damage caused by a 'dangerous escape' of material. Conversely, in a later interview Robens claimed that the disaster had been caused by "natural unknown springs" beneath the tip; but evidence emerged that the existence of these springs was common knowledge.