As you said, Herts. The Popplewell Inquiry found that the club had been warned about the fire risk that the rubbish accumulating under the stand had posed. by Silkyskills1 Fri May 11, 2018 1:36 pm, Post [11], The disaster also had a long-lasting effect on the fans. I saw the footage of the disaster as part of a fire training session and at the time it had been taken off any websites etc. But Ms Ibrahim saw her husband on her TV set, on the Valley Parade half way line, helping stretcher some of the injured away to safety. These are the kinds of loose ends which would now be investigated to the end of the earth by the Hillsborough team. And, before we knew it, the flames were racing down the whole stand. [46], In 2014, the theatre company Funny You Should Ask (FYSA) premiered their heartfelt tribute to the 56 people who died at the fire. Robert Wedgeworth (72) Family Members . [49], Parrs Wood Press published Four Minutes to Hell: The Story of the Bradford City Fire (2005) by author Paul Firth;[50] the title refers to the estimated time it took for the stand to be completely ablaze from the first flames being spotted. BARRIE, ONT. These 2 users liked this post: Clarets4me Juan Tanamera. Fifty-six people died. ClaretMoffitt Posts: 3889 Joined: Fri Jan 22, 2016 7:19 pm . I walked past a public telephone outside the ground and there were queues of people waiting to ring home. A further 265 fans were injured in the blazes that day, and describe it as a traumatic memory and one of the saddest days in English football. He survived but clearly his life was also shattered on that day. He remembers people coming out of the ground and going into his house and phoning people. He lost his father John, 34, his 11-year-old brother Andrew, uncle Peter, 32, and grandfather Eddie, 63, in the fire. on: May 11, 2012, 10:28:10 am . Spare a thought or prayer for them today. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. The majority of sales in Ormondroyd Avenue during the last year were semi-detached properties, selling for an average price of 130,000. He remembers people coming out of the ground and going into his house and phoning people. Whether they don't feel welcome, for instance. Derek Dempsey (46) No one gave it the attention it ought to have received.. .. Memorial ID. I also knew the Club Secretary Terry Newman very well. [8], The Bradford City matchday squad of players and staff consisted of Terry Yorath, Trevor Cherry, Chris Withe, Don Goodman, Eric McManus, Tony Clegg, John Hawley, Dave Evans, Bryan Edwards, John Hendrie, Mark Ellis, Stuart McCall, Peter Jackson, Bobby Campbell, Martin Singleton and Greg Abbott. When Bradford City played Lincoln City at Valley Parade on May 11th, 1985, what should have been an afternoon of celebration quickly turned into one of the worst disasters ever seen at a British football ground. Fifty-four Bradford City supporters and two Lincoln fans would die in the horror, the youngest were three 11-year old boys, the oldest being the clubs former chairman, Sam Firth who was 86. The tender that was won by the University of Bradford to create a LOD3 digital twin of the city will see the area shown within the following map captured. Samuel Firth (86) Please note: census information may include figures for adjacent streets and postcodes. They were even quite afraid of the football fans before the fire. Police worked until 4am the next morning, under lighting, to remove all the bodies. The unheroic obstinacy of the woman who refused to leave without her handbag "because my teeth are in it." Ran. It's the Ormondroyd & Stockman names that get to me - both of them dad and two sons. He later said: "I have never known anything like it, either before, or since. When this house was purchased in December 2020 the House Price Index for WEST YORKSHIRE was 129.5. [57] Following the 30th anniversary of the fire, a number of news organisations named this man as Eric Bennett who was visiting his nephew in Bradford from Australia and attended the game on the day. It was a massive tragedy for everybody at the club.". It provides football coaching and education to young people, works with youngsters aged between 16 and 18 on the National Citizen Service and has done several projects in the local community. "When I read the Popplewell transcripts I could see they were processing 10-15 witnesses a day. We stayed in the pub for hours. Interesting theory related to the cost of making the ground safe following promotion and the history of Stafford Heginbotham who's businesses were almost synonymous with fires and insurance claims. The House Price Index as of 1 Sep 2022 is 153.4 which is a change of 18.457%. A police officer shouted to a colleague for an extinguisher, but his call was misheard and instead the fire brigade were radioed. Another player went into the office space to ensure there was nobody there. She said: Over the years, the story of the Bradford City fire has been told many times - the story of the supporters and the players, but one story that had never been told was the story of how the local people had helped. As many supporters still required rescue from the stand, they were unable to immediately start fighting the source of the fire. Within a few hours of the blaze starting, it was established that 56 people had been killed, many as a result of smoke inhalation, although some of them had survived until reaching hospital.[11]. He says he wants people to "look back on it in decades to come and think that somebody did some good work here and that the local fans and local people showed what the club meant to them and how much the club meant to the local community. The stand had been officially condemned and was due to be replaced with a steel structure after the season ended. by tim_noone Thu May 10, 2018 11:53 pm, Post "We're trying to find out why a lot of the Asian communities don't come to the ground, whether they feel they can't come to the games because they feel intimidated or whatever.". However, there is a lot in this book that troubles me about the science, or lack of it, used in the testing of the investigators' hypothesis as to the source of the ignition. Topic: 25 years ago today, the Bradford City disaster. CONTRA COSTA COUNTY, Calif. -- A brush fire burning Monday morning on the peat wetlands of Bradford Island in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta has charred 212 acres and prompted some . Ran home and put the television on." Bradford City FC One letter from the council said the problems "should be rectified as soon as possible"; a second said: "A carelessly discarded cigarette could give rise to a fire risk." "[11] Police Superintendent Barry Osborne, divisional commander for the area, said many of his officers cried when they saw how badly people had been burned. It was a massive tragedy for everybody at the club.". Most of the exits at the back were locked or shut and there were no stewards present to open them, but seven were forced open or found open. She was Hazel Greenwood the mother whose children, 13-year-old Felix and 11-year-old Rupert, had been ushered away from the flames of the stadium fire all those years ago by a traffic warden, seeking to shelter them under his tunic. The director of that organisation, Dr David Woolley, was interviewed for just two hours by the inquiry team, and his private papers reveal his desperate rush to assemble information into a report for Popplewell. The playing area and stands were very basic but the ground had enough room for 18,000spectators. After its renovation in 1990 they named the home end of their ground the 'Stacey-West Stand', in honour of Bill Stacey and Jim West, the two Lincoln City supporters who were amongst the 56 to die at Bradford. He was helped out of the stand by other fans and spent a period of time in hospital. At the time of the disaster, many stadiums had perimeter fencing between the stands and the pitch to prevent incidents of football hooliganism particularly pitch invasions which were rife during the 1980s. talk all about the game and how big this win is for Ten Hag's men. There were no extinguishers in the stand's passageway for fear of vandalism, and one spectator ran to the clubhouse to find one but was overcome by smoke and impeded by others trying to escape. Peter Fletcher (32) There was no appetite for a re-enactment of events, such as that which Dublin embarked upon when a fire at the Stardust nightclub fire in Arcane claimed 48 lives in 1981. It was also a catalyst for the substantial redevelopment and modernisation of many British football grounds within the following thirty years. [2] The main stand was described as a "mammoth structure", but was unusual for its time because of its place on the side of a hill. Picture date: Thursday August 25, 2022. "[16] At the front of the stand, men threw children over the wall to help them escape. "In memory of the 56 people who went to the match on a Saturday and never returned home." Simon Neil Ward (18) BBC West Yorkshire: Sport. [56], On 17 April 2015, retired Detective Inspector Raymond Falconer, in a report by the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, said the police were aware of an Australian man who admitted to starting the fire. It was his first and last football match. by Spike Fri May 11, 2018 1:12 pm, Post The 1985 Bradford City A.F.C stadium fire is regarded as one of the worst disasters in the history of British football. [citation needed] Spectators later spoke of initially feeling their feet becoming warmer; one of them ran to the back of the stand for a fire extinguisher but found none. 28 years today; the Bradford City fire disaster. "[59], Raymond Falconer's reliability had previously been questioned by Daniel Taylor in The Guardian who stated that: "The Bradford Telegraph and Argus described him as a 'top detective'. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? [14] It took less than four minutes for the entire stand to be engulfed in flames.[11]. Fans in the next stand (the "Bradford End") pulled down the fence separating them from the pitch. Of the 56people who died in the fire,[2] 54 were Bradford supporters and two supported Lincoln. (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. This page was last edited on 24 February 2023, at 13:41. Harold Mitchell (79) He was actually one of the detectives involved in one of the gravest miscarriages of justices in the country, the murder of Carol Wilkinson in Bradford, where someone was locked up for 20 years for a murder he didn't commit."[60]. Others werent so lucky and headed towards the exits at back of the stands which had been locked after kick-off and this is where the many of those who died perished in the inferno. The stand had no perimeter fencing to keep fans from accessing the pitch, thus averting an instance of crush asphyxia as in the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. As he received the injured at Bradford Royal Infirmary he was able to call upon 10% of the UK's population of plastic surgeons. [5] However, he also warned the club of a build-up of litter beneath the stand because of a gap between the seats. From the tragic fire at Valley Parade in May 1985 to the club's slide from the Premier League to administration in more recent years, people will obviously have many memories of Bradford City FC - both positive and negative. Obviously never come to terms with what he saw, and that's 30 years on. Eric Hudson (72) It's why he gravitated to London and the enclosed spaces, moving to Brixton when his first base became gentrified. Anne Robinson (pictured with Mr Ormondroyd) moved into the family home near Bradford, West Yorkshire, to care for his wife Donna. Uncensored coverage of the fire was transmitted minutes after the event on World of Sport and the BBC's Grandstand after the video cassette was physically driven to Yorkshire Television. Even the received wisdom is enough to make you rage against football's breathtaking complacency: the same complacency which would turn the terrace at Hillsborough into a killing ground, four years later. The Valley Parade stadium, long-established home to Bradford City Football Club, had been noted for its antiquated design . Norman Hall (71) The Documentary highlighted the 'poison pen letters' and graffiti targeted at the then club chairman Stafford Heginbotham over accusations that he was in some way personally responsible for the deaths of the 56 people who died at the fire.[54]. Moira Helen Hodgson (15) The stadium was known for its antiquated design and facilities, which included the wooden roof of the main stand. [10] One eyewitness, Geoffrey Mitchell, told the BBC: "It spread like a flash. ("And Dad being Dad, he blagged it all like a dream."). "So yes, it's right that these old questions be asked now. The school hall, like the theatre, was still and noiseless as the children listened to this passionate and indefatigable woman, whose family home should be full of the sound of many grandchildren, by now, but who is instead still seeking what meagre consolations she can find from the wreckage of Bradford's forgotten tragedy. "That made me angry: that people don't know about this.". There was talk of "a raincoat smell" about 15.40pm that afternoon, as the fire took hold. A former Bradford City player is asking for people's memories of the club's past - both good and bad. Among the main outcomes of the inquiry were the banning of new wooden grandstands at all UK sports grounds, the immediate closure of other wooden stands deemed unsafe and the banning of smoking in other wooden stands. He had to undergo counselling and was unable to go to another game for several years. The fire destroyed the main stand completely and left only burned seats, lamps and metal fences remaining. 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