Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of one of the worst disasters in the history of British football. On 11 May 1985 a fire erupted in the midst of a third-division tie between Bradford City and Lincoln City at Valley Parade, killing 54 home supporters and two Lincoln fans. The death toll was so high, the manner of their death so horrific and the litany of fire-safety neglect so appalling that it’s hard to understand why the disaster has not attracted anywhere near the level of coverage in the succeeding years that the Hillsborough disaster – rightly – has. Where to start. The stand, which had been condemned and was due for demolition (though it was still deemed good enough for football supporters for the time being), was made of timber – and this at a time when supporters were allowed to smoke freely on the terraces. Ready-made bonfire. More incomprehensibly still, litter had been allowed to pile up beneath the stand – a ready-made bonfire just awaiting ignition. Just to give you an idea of how long the rubbish had been accruing, among the debris afterwards a copy of the Bradford Telegraph and Argus was found, dated 4 November 1968. As the fire – which was blamed on a dropped match – spread, most people scrambled desperately to the foot of the stand, climbing over advertising hoardings to the safety of the pitch. Others the police – demonstrating a level of incompetence seen again four years later in the Leppings Lane stand at Hillsborough – actually ushered to the exits at the rear of the stand – to their doom. The rear exits, the police hadn’t realised, had actually been boarded up or padlocked. Remarkably the fixture was filmed by ITV – a rare thing in those days – and you can see footage of the fire unfold below. It’s quite incongruous to hear the commentator switch from the cliched excitability of football-ese to the grave tones of a war correspondent. The speed at which the fire develops – the entire stand is engulfed in flames in a matter of minutes – is staggering. At one point a crowd of police, stewards and supporters desperately tried to extinguish flames that had engulfed a supporter by hitting them with their jackets. The man, a retired mill worker, later died in hospital. All the more jarring then was the jubilant singing of many Bradford City fans on the pitch as half of their stadium burned – clearly ignorant of the loss of life occurring and something they’ve have had plenty of time to regret. Writing in the Guardian last week, Daniel Taylor recalled the poignant story of a former classmate who had escaped the blaze but lost his dad, grandfather, uncle and younger brother in the disaster. The club had apparently been warned on three separate occasions about the potential fire risk, twice by the Health and Safety Executive and once by the county council, between 1981 to 1984. And the Safety of Sports Grounds Act introduced in the wake of the 1971 Ibrox disaster, which stipulated that wooden stands should be capable of evacuation in two and a half minutes, that all combustible material must be removed from beneath them, that all voids should be sealed and that no one should be more than 30 metres from the nearest manned exit, had clearly been ignored. Looking back on the sheer idiocy of health and safety measures at the time – there didn’t seem to be any – it’s worth reflecting on how UK far fire safety has come since. For all the anti-‘elf and safety bleating of the Daily Mail the progress the industry has made has surely saved hundreds if not thousands of lives. Too bad the improvements came too late for the 56 who lost their lives on 11 May 1985. https://youtube/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=v6iTSAwGo1Y
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:00:01 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015