Two or three burly men put their weight against it and smashed the gate open. Burning timbers and molten materials fell from the roof onto the crowd and seating below, and dense black smoke enveloped a passageway behind the stand, where many spectators were trying to escape. One retired mill worker made his way to the pitch, but was walking about on fire from head to foot. There has been reports of people lighting paper under the seats, and it was important that as many fans as possible who were in the stand or at the Kop end contacted the police. Pendleton: "I got pushed down to the front and I remember looking around and suddenly this smouldering, small fire had taken over virtually half a block and was starting to hit the roof. When the game began there was no way out for them, except by going on to the pitch. The two sides met for the first time after the fire in April 1989, when they arranged a benefit match in aid of the Hillsborough disaster, at Valley Parade. ", There has always been a close bond between the club and its supporters since the fire, he adds. 1.7M subscribers in the CatastrophicFailure community. "I got stuck against the wall with the weight of people behind me trying to get over. Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning, Revealed: former Bradford chairman linked to at least eight fires before Valley Parade disaster, Martin Fletcher: Maybe the reason I am here is to finally reveal the truth, TheStory of the Bradford Fire: could any man really be as unlucky as Stafford Heginbotham?. But I've never spoken to anyone who thought the fire wasn't anything other than a tragic accident. A new book, written by Valley Parade survivor Martin Fletcher, claims then-Bradford City chairman Stafford Heginbotham had previously netted millions of pounds from insurance payouts after at least eight previous fires at businesses he was associated with. Bradford council introduced its emergency plans procedure yesterday to give aid to many families affected by the disaster. "I remember not being able to watch it, but we couldn't get out. Come celebrate the beastly realm and our place in it and with it, an even more radically inclusive and sustainable city and global community in 2023: ANIMALIA! He was completely on fire and it looked as though he simply did not know what had happened to him.'. (2015), 2003 Football League Third Division play-off final, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bradford_City_stadium_fire&oldid=1141323458, Fire disasters involving barricaded escape routes, Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2010, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2021, Articles needing additional references from May 2018, All articles needing additional references, Articles needing additional references from December 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Fan attempted to extinguish a lit cigarette, it slipped through floorboards and fell on rubbish, igniting it. The smoke was choking. The man in charge of investigating the fire, Detective Superintendent Kevin Cooper was at the game. People were wandering around outside the ground in disbelief, reminiscent of an air disaster, at what had happened the day before. Television cameras spotted the outbreak of fire in Valley Parade's main stand at 15:40 BST. What Is Burning Man? Edited by BBC Sport's Jonathan Jurejko. In those days there was a lot of hooliganism and violence, so my initial thought was: 'I hope it has not kicked off - that's the last thing we need'. Since then, it has been further re-developed and, today, Valley Parade is a modern 25,136 all-seater stadium, which is virtually unrecognisable from how it was at the time of the disaster, save for the original clubhouse that still stands beside the main stand, and the flank support wall that runs down the Hollywell Ash Lane at the "Bradford End". [40] Matthew Wildman was 17 at the time and needed crutches to walk because of rheumatoid arthritis. He was asked if precautions would have been adequate had the club been in the Second Division. Thirty years on, the majority of survivors still find it too difficult to talk about what happened at the Valley Parade on 11 May 1985. [1] When the association football club was formed, the ground was changed very little and had no covered accommodation. "[23], On the 25th anniversary of the fire, the University of Bradford established the United Kingdom's largest academic research centre in skin sciences as an extension to its plastic surgery and burns research unit.[24]. By the time the fire brigade arrived they were faced with huge flames and dense smoke. I have never had to deal with such a situation before, and this has put the city on its heels.'. "Us players must have been in the tunnel for seconds - and I mean seconds. [13], The match kicked off at 3:04pm and after forty minutes of the first half, the score remained 00,[14] in what was described as a drab affair with neither team threatening to score. [58] Following this report, Leslie Brownlie, who was the nephew in question, is reported to have said that his uncle never made such an admission of starting the fire. Now a new film claims an Australian was responsible for the worst . Of the 56 people who died in the fire,[2] 54 were Bradford supporters and two supported Lincoln. The 51 other bodies of children, women and men were so badly burned that identification will take many days. The 1985 Bradford City Stadium fire remembered - IFSEC Global [30], The outcome of the test case resulted in over 154 claims being addressed (110 civilians and 44 police officers)[31] by the injured or bereaved. Following his own 15 year investigation Into the fire, which killed four of his family members while he escaped, former tax accountant Martin Fletcher released 56: The Story of the Bradford Fire (2015). I remember trying to make sense of what was going on. "We wouldn't normally have covered that game - no question about it. The extinguishers were put there so that they would be out of the way of fans who could use them as missiles, which apparently had happened previously. Wealso use analytics cookies that don't track usersto help us improve it. Otherwise, I would not have been able to get out. "Several minutes before half-time I saw there was a wee bit of bother. People pushed him to the ground and tried to smother the flames. Bradford City stadium fire: BBC documentary says Aussie man to blame It transpired that the wooden stand had already been condemned and was set to be demolished just two days after the tragedy. Each year Lincoln send representatives to the annual memorial service in Bradford city centre and between 2007 and 2009, were managed by Bradford's captain that day, Peter Jackson. "The scene when I arrived was horrendous. "[16] As spectators began to cascade over the wall separating the stand from the pitch, the linesman on that side of the pitch informed referee Norman Glover, who stopped the game with three minutes remaining before half-time. As he received the injured at Bradford Royal Infirmary he was able to call upon 10% of the UK's population of plastic surgeons. Mr Delahunte was screaming into his microphone describing the scene until it became impossible to continue broadcasting. Bradford City stadium fire: The untold stories of the 1985 fire My hands suffered the most because they were exposed the most. We were sat in our football kit, we didn't know what to do. "[28], West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council was found to have failed in its duty under the Fire Precautions Act 1971. 56 dead and hundreds more injured. Fletcher, who was 12 at the time of the fire, does not make any direct allegations but he does believe Heginbotham's history with fires resulting in payouts of around 27m in today's terms warrants further investigation. Most of those who escaped onto the pitch were saved.[10]. "Could any man really be as unlucky as Heginbotham had been?" I had no idea. She was hysterical and trying to find her three children. Bradford City stadium fire. A football match in Bradford UK ends It was an awful thing to watch.". "All you could see was black cloud. Somebody looked round and grabbed me by the hood of my coat to pull me over. They were immediately promoted back to the Football League in 1988, and survived for 23 years before being relegated again in 2011. The Bradford city stadium fire. 56 people died when a - reddit People had walked through turnstiles and along a wooden corridor before descending the steps into their seats. Together, flanked by undocumented supporters, they managed to clear all but one person who made it to the front of the stand. The disaster led to rigid new safety standards in UK stadiums, including the banning of new wooden grandstands. Bradford City Fire disaster: 36 years on the city's pioneering burns There is no malicious vendetta, there is no over-exaggeration, there are no trumped-up facts. [10] The stand seats did not have risers; this had allowed a large accumulation of rubbish and paper waste in the cavity space under the stand, which had not been cleared for many months. Only one person had been positively identified by police by early last night. Some had been crushed as they tried to crawl under turnstiles to escape. Watch Missed Warnings on BBC One in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire at 22:45 BST on Tuesday, 12 May. A Bradford Disaster Appeal Fund raised 3.5m for the victims and their families. The flames suddenly appeared and the whole roof took alight,' he said. However, the fire had consumed the stand entirely by that point and they were faced with huge flames and very dense smoke. Spreading with almost unbelievable speed, a small fire under a wooden. "Since then I have thought of everything we could have done, but we didn't have the presence of mind to run across the pitch and tell people to get out. The Bradford way was keep it to ourselves - it worked collectively that we did that. 527 votes, 98 comments. It is impossible so far to be accurate about the precise cause of the fire, with grossly conflicting reports from witnesses. A police officer shouted to a colleague for an extinguisher, but his call was misheard and instead the fire brigade were radioed. [10] Bradford City's coach Terry Yorath, whose family was in the stand,[19] ran onto the pitch to help evacuate people. The 1984-85 season had been one of the most successful in Bradford City's 82-year history. Coach Terry Yorath described the events as "the worst day in my life. Helm later described the start of the fire in an interview to the Express newspaper: .mw-parser-output .templatequote{overflow:hidden;margin:1em 0;padding:0 40px}.mw-parser-output .templatequote .templatequotecite{line-height:1.5em;text-align:left;padding-left:1.6em;margin-top:0}, [A] man over from Australia visiting his son got two tickets to the game.
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