Bradford City disaster

[Zulus Thousand of em]

RIP to all those who died at Valley Parade on 11 May 1985. 56 people died at a football match. There won't be a minute's silence observed at today's games, which is a fecking disgrace in my book.

I will never forget the appalling image of the old chap who walked out of the stand covered in flames. He subsequently died.

There's a very poignant article in today's Independent. Worth reading and quietly reflecting, in my opinion.

STARTS

From today's Independent

Bradford City: After the fire
Twenty years ago today, Bradford's afternoon of title celebration turned into a tragedy which left 56 people dead and 200 injured
By Phil Shaw
11 May 2005


Twenty years ago today, just when Stuart McCall expected to be pogoing on the pitch with his Bradford City colleagues and the Third Division championship trophy, he was stumbling through the streets by the Valley Parade ground wearing his kit and club blazer. The old main stand was ablaze - and McCall's father was missing.

Increasingly frantic, he stopped a policeman. "Everyone got out OK, didn't they?" he asked. The reply sent shivers through McCall even as his face and legs felt the searing heat from the fire 20 yards away. "Those who could get out," said the officer, his face ghostly, "got out."

Panic gripped McCall. Climbing into his car, its bodywork scorched, he sped off to Leeds, hoping that his 60-year-old father Andy, a former Leeds United player, had driven home. The radio brought news of a mounting death toll. There was no sign of Andy at his house, so with head spinning and stomach churning, he made for Bradford Royal Hospital.

He was told there that his father had been taken to the special burns unit at Pinderfields Hospital at Wakefield. Torn between relief that Andy was apparently alive, and concern over the injuries and trauma he might have suffered, he arrived to find his father in a bed, covered in bandages and ointment. Still in his sweaty strip from Bradford's abandoned game with Lincoln City, McCall hugged the nurse and then burst into tears.

Andy's head was badly burnt and he needed skin grafts on his hands. There was the mental scarring, too. Once a proud observer of Stuart's progress, he subsequently became an infrequent attender as the midfielder played for Everton, Rangers and Scotland before returning to help Bradford into the Premiership and moving on to his current role, at the age of 40, as player-coach at Sheffield United. Yet Andy was one of the fortunate ones.

Fifty-six men, women and children died and more than 200 were seriously injured. McCall, who spent much of that summer attending funerals and visiting and raising money for the survivors, will today join his old team-mates, community leaders and a civic party from Lincoln at a remembrance service in Bradford's Centenary Square. A wreath will be laid at the Disaster Memorial Sculpture while the city bells will play "You'll Never Walk Alone" and "Abide With Me".

Those gathered will no doubt reflect that, when Saturday came on 11 May 1985, it felt euphoric to be a Bradford City supporter. The Third Division title won, six decades in the lower divisions were over. After years in which cars made the short run from Bradford to Elland Road, City would be competing at the same level as Leeds the following season. A full house of 11,000 came to see the captain, Peter Jackson, collect the silverware, and McCall remembers a "carnival" atmosphere.

Minutes before half-time, a small fire broke out near the back of Block G, which probably started when a dropped cigarette stub or match had ignited the piles of rubbish that had accumulated beneath the seats for many years. The dilapidated main stand, with its wooden seats and tarred-and-timbered roof, had stood since 1908. By the cruellest of ironies, it was scheduled to have its wooden terracing replaced by concrete less than 48 hours later.

Lincoln's visit was the last time it would be occupied in its original form. Steelwork had been delivered and stored behind the stand, ready for work to start on the Monday. In Football Grounds of Britain, Simon Inglis, who is an authority on stadium history and architecture, wrote poignantly: "Just another 90 minutes and the stand would have done its stint." Instead, it was about to become a death trap.

Terry Yorath, who today works as assistant manager to Jackson at Huddersfield Town, was then coach to Trevor Cherry at Bradford. He thought nothing of it when a policeman asked where he could find water, pointing him to a tap near the groundsman's hose in a far corner of the pitch before refocusing on the goalless match in front of him.

Suddenly he became aware of spectators clambering over the wall and drifting on to the pitch. Looking round, he saw smoke rising from the stand. The referee called the teams off the pitch. By the time Yorath had walked briskly from the halfway line to the corner which housed the dressing-rooms, he could see flames shooting up.

He went in search of his parents, his then wife and their three children (one of whom is now the television presenter Gabby Logan), who he soon discovered had all got out safely. Astonished to find people in the directors' room, Yorath screamed at them to "Get f***ing out!" A female member of the Lincoln contingent, who was oblivious to the gravity of the situation, took exception to his language but heeded the advice.

Yorath helped a man whose hands were burnt white. Then he heard "a whoosh". The fire, fanned by the wind and trapped by the roof, had flashed through the stand, "faster than anyone could run". Breaking a window in the players' lounge with a chair, he jumped into the street. There he saw the Bradford chairman, Stafford Heginbotham, who told him two people had died. Yorath warned him that the number was far higher. On re-entering the ground, he had witnessed numerous charred bodies.

It took just four-and-a-half minutes for the stand to become an inferno, engulfing those who tried to escape via the back of the stand through turnstiles which had been locked. Among the fatalities was a former girlfriend of the Bradford striker Don Goodman; she had phoned him to ask for tickets for this celebration of a match. The club's oldest fan, 86-year-old Sam Firth, also perished, as did two Lincoln supporters.

The Bradford players were told to assemble in a public house, where, dumbfounded, they watched live coverage of the developing tragedy. The Yorkshire Television commentator, John Helm, had come to report on a football match but, instead, found himself describing the nightmarish image of a policeman running on to the grass with his hair on fire. The heat was so fierce that Helm talked of a feeling of burning, even from his gantry on the far side of the ground. Two decades on, he has never watched the footage.

Stuart McCall, who was often unthinkingly portrayed as "flame-haired" as his profile rose in the ensuing years, took the championship trophy around local hospitals over the days that followed. Far from being deemed insensitive, the gesture was seen by doctors as a positive aid to recovery for the injured, many of whom formed enduring friendships with the players who visited them.

Valley Parade rose from the ashes, reopening as a modern stadium after 19 months in which Bradford played their home fixtures at Odsal Stadium and at Leeds and Huddersfield. The Popplewell Inquiry led to Parliament passing legislation to improve safety standards (although events at Hillsborough three years later suggested it did not go far enough).

The disaster fund raised more than £3m for the survivors, the "lucky" ones who scrambled over the front wall on to the pitch. As a day of joy and pride turned into a scene of biblical hellishness, with molten tar raining down and the unforgiving fire devouring everything in its path, that was the route to safety for Andy McCall. He recently turned 80. Time may have helped to heal the wounds, but Bradford will never forget.

ENDS

We should never forget.

The names and ages of the 56 victims of the Valley Parade Fire Disaster -
11 May 1985.

[Official list as released to the National Press]
ACKROYD, John Douglas 32 Baildon
ANDERTON, Edmund 68 Bingley
BAINES, Alexander Shaw 70 Bradford
BAMFORD, Herbert 72 Bradford
BULMER, Christopher James 11 Burley-in-Wharfedale
COXON, Jack Leo 76 Bradford
COXON, Leo Anthony 44 Halifax
CRABTREE, David James 30 Bradford
CRABTREE, Harry 76 Bradford
DEMPSEY, Derek 46 Morley
FIRTH, Muriel 56 Baildon
FIRTH, Samuel 86 Bradford
FLETCHER, Andrew 11 East Bridgford, Nottinghamshire
FLETCHER, Edmond 63 Pudsey
FLETCHER, John 34 East Bridgford, Nottingham
FLETCHER, Peter 32 Gildersome
FORSTER, Nellie 64 Bradford
GREENWOOD, Felix Winspear 13 Denholme
GREENWOOD, Peter 46 Denholme
GREENWOOD, Rupert Benedict 11 Denholme
HALL, Norman 71 Bradford
HALLIDAY, Peter Anthony 34 Bradford
HARTLEY, Arthur 79 Bradford
HINDLE, Edith 79 Bradford
HINDLE, Frederick 76 Bradford
HODGSON, Moira Helen 15 Oakenshaw
HUDSON, Eric 72 Bingley
HUGHES, John 64 Bradford
HUTTON, John 74 Bradford
KERR, Walter 76 Bradford
LOVELL, Peter Charles 43 Bradford
LUDLAM, Jack 55 Bradford
McPHERSON, Gordon Stuart 39 Bradford
McPHERSON, Irene 28 Bradford
MASON, Roy 74 Silsden
MIDDLETON, Frederick Norman 84 Bradford
MITCHELL, Harold 79 Bradford
MUHL, Elizabeth 21 Leeds
NORMINGTON, Ernest 74 Shipley
ORMONDROYD, Gerald Priestley 40 Bingley
ORMONDROYD, Richard John 12 Bingley
ORMONDROYD, Robert Ian 12 Bingley
POLLARD, Sylvia Lund 69 Bradford
PRICE, Herbert 78 Shipley
ROBERTS, Amanda Jayne 20 Bradford
SAMPSON, Jane 18 Leeds
STACEY, William 72 Sleaford, Lincolnshire
STOCKMAN, Craig Albert 14 Bradford
STOCKMAN, Jane Ashley 16 Bradford
STOCKMAN, Trevor John 38 Brighouse
TURNER, Howard Malcolm 41 Bingley
TURNER, Sarah Elizabeth 16 Bingley
WARD, Simon Neil 18 Shipley
WEDGEWORTH, Robert 72 Guiseley
WEST, William James 78 North Hykeham, Lincoln
WRIGHT, Adrian Mark 11 Bradford

[clapton is god]

Well said, Zulu. It all unfolded live on TV before our very eyes until someone thought it too gruesome for afternoon TV. I also have a vivid image of the cop mentioned in the article with his hair and hands alight. Unforgettable and, as you say, a disgrace that there's no minute spent remembering.

[Worthy4England]

RIP.

Sorta goes to show how fcuked up football is.

[Abdoulaye's Twin]

Well said, Zulu. It all unfolded live on TV before our very eyes until someone thought it too gruesome for afternoon TV. I also have a vivid image of the cop mentioned in the article with his hair and hands alight. Unforgettable and, as you say, a disgrace that there's no minute spent remembering.

+1

[Prufrock]

Yep. Seen the video of the footage once and have never forgotten it. Horrendous.

Has there been a reason given for the lack of minute's silence btw?

[a1]

not that you'd want to, but iirc , someone put a firemans/safety/explanation/internaltraining video of it on the youtubes (which afaik is still on, but probably wisely isnt viewable via the uk anymore).

the thing i thought were "it goes up quick" .

is goodison still made out of wood ? even now ?

[bobo the clown]

Horrific ... and mourned with true dignity. Bradford people have a preference not to dwell on it or mention it generally. I.admit to looking at Burnden differently after that.
RIP

[Harry Genshaw]

Truly horrific and I remember it well.

The minutes silence will be next year won't it? The 30th anniversary

[Gooner Girl]

I don't remember it but just been reading about it. I knew it had happened but why is it not in the media still as much as Hillsborough is? Because the fire was just an accident and there was no long inquiry needed?

[Harry Genshaw]

I don't remember it but just been reading about it. I knew it had happened but why is it not in the media still as much as Hillsborough is? Because the fire was just an accident and there was no long inquiry needed?

Apart from an aborted attempt by the Daily Star, the Bradford disaster wasn't blamed on the fans and hence no need for any protracted legal battles

[jaffka]

I remember watching it as it happened. Truly horrific.

Rest in peace to all those unfortunate people taken too early.

[bwfcdan94]

Yep. Seen the video of the footage once and have never forgotten it. Horrendous.

Has there been a reason given for the lack of minute's silence btw?

Yes Bradford aren't a big club so therefore the club and it's fans are irrelevant. If it had of happened to the likes of Leeds or Man United we would have a minute's silence across the country once a year.

[bwfcdan94]

What about Turf Moor, half of that is wood. It seems that lessons haven't been learned as otherwise such wooden seats would have been replaced.

[jaffka]

No smoking, ground safety certificates and regular inspections are the norm now.

The risk is massively reduced.

[Bruce Rioja]

Cheers Zulu. I remember it well, and as you say, the image of the guy ablaze as he ran across the field is one that never leaves the mind. It was perfectly common for people to spark up in wooden stands then, I used to do it myself - It's ridiculous that it took something as horrendous as the Bradford fire for us to realise how stupid the practice was.

There but for the grace of God, go us.

RIP one and all.

[bwfcdan94]

And people say my generation has less common sense than previous generations wood+ fire = big fire. None the less you still see people lighting up in the stands today.