Bradford City

[Hillonearth]

29 minutes ago, Shotgun said:

Ooft. This thread has brought back some horrific memories.

As @Fullerene said; the commentator simply remarked "Well, we seem to have a small fire." and then in no time at all, we were watching utter carnage as people desperately tried to escape the blaze. Remember that poor old guy running with his hair on fire, trying to beat the flames out with his hands? That still haunts me.

I remember watching in on TV - you hoped most had made it out safely, then you realised how bad things were when you saw the police maybe a hundred yards away from the stand beating out the fires that were spontaneously breaking out on their uniforms on account of heat...then the one man the camera zoomed in on who came walking out of the stand on fire almost in slo-mo...

The stuff of nightmares.

[Tutankhamen]

1 hour ago, Ginaro said:

If you've not seen it there's a 72 minute BT Sport documentary

http://sport.bt.com/video/one-day-in-may-the-story-of-the-bradford-city-fire-91363980609335

Thank you.

Very much a cross section of folks view of the terrible events that day. And one load of heroes from cops to football hooligans.

[BFTD]

12 hours ago, Fullerene said:

I have seen the clip of the actual fire.  I don't want to criticise the commentator but he kept saying how the police were doing a marvellous job and ignored all the brave fans that were trying to save people too.  Different mindset to now or maybe I am reading too much into it.

No, I don't think you are. The commentator was probably just being careful but, as evidenced by the reaction to Hillsborough a few years later, the mindset at the time was that football fans wouldn't react to an emergency like "normal" folk. Thankfully, I don't think anyone at Bradford was accused of looting corpses, or whatever florid fantasies the press could concoct.

[BFTD]

14 hours ago, Ginaro said:

If you've not seen it there's a 72 minute BT Sport documentary

http://sport.bt.com/video/one-day-in-may-the-story-of-the-bradford-city-fire-91363980609335

Just watched it. I wondered why they chopped up the footage rather than just showing it in real time, as it would have illustrated the timescale better, but then I watched it unedited again and it’s just terrifying.

Less than ten minutes from the emergency call going in to the entire stand being completely engulfed. Also an early call for the back gates to be unlocked to let people out, but the polis couldn’t find anyone with the keys. Seems like that’s where most people died.

[Dunfermline Don]

A sad day for football. I think there may also have been a fan killed in trouble at a Birmingham Leeds game the same day and it was also around the same time as Heysel. Probably the lowest point of football south of the border till Hillsboro.
I seem to recall Simon Inglis book on the football ground of England in the early 80s had a comment about that stand which mentions rubbish that had piled up through holes in the wooden flooring.
Some of the old grounds certainly had more character than modern stadium but they were also death traps!

[GordonD]

11 minutes ago, Dunfermline Don said:

I seem to recall Simon Inglis book on the football ground of England in the early 80s had a comment about that stand which mentions rubbish that had piled up through holes in the wooden flooring.

Including, allegedly, an empty peanuts packet with a pre-decimal price on. (1971, to save you looking it up.)

[Sherrif John Bunnell]

Didn't it turn out that the then Bradford chairman had an unfortunate track record when it came to his business premises burning down?

[Ya Bezzer!]

42 minutes ago, Dunfermline Don said:

I seem to recall Simon Inglis book on the football ground of England in the early 80s had a comment about that stand which mentions rubbish that had piled up through holes in the wooden flooring.
Some of the old grounds certainly had more character than modern stadium but they were also death traps!

There was also a fatal fire at Kings Cross underground station about the same time which started for similar reasons - a build up of rubbish under a wooden escalator.

The awareness of fire safety was pretty rudimentary.

[Fullerene]

2 minutes ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

Didn't it turn out that the then Bradford chairman had an unfortunate track record when it came to his business premises burning down?

Yes that had been investigated.  However it was never suggested this was arson.  Anybody wanting to start a "chip pan fire"at the grounds could have done so when nobody was there and still collected the insurance.

In another documentary they interviewed an Australian man who was fairly certain he was the one who dropped the cigarette end that started the whole thing going.  He tried to do something about it but no luck.

If not him then someone else.  It was a death trap.  Years of rubbish under the stand.  An accident waiting to happen.

[19QOS19]

That was a good* watch. We were shown the fire footage at our fire safety course but that's about as much as I knew about the incident. A couple of things stood out for me: thank f**k they never had fences at the front of the stand or that would have been far far worse. It's so sad how humans are programmed/creatures of habit. If those people had ran to the front rather than go back the way they came in then they probably would have survived. But as someone said later, going onto the pitch is a football no no and even then a lot of them probably had that in their head. I did it myself when an alarm went off in Tesco. I walked right past an emergency exit. Scary.
Finally, saying the names at the end brought some tears, specifically the 3 families. Each one was obviously a dad and their 2 kids. Horrendous for them to die together but how the f**k do the mums deal with that? If my wife and daughters died together I expect I wouldn't be far behind tbh.

Harrowing viewing.

*You know what I mean.

[Dunfermline Don]

There was also a fatal fire at Kings Cross underground station about the same time which started for similar reasons - a build up of rubbish under a wooden escalator.
The awareness of fire safety was pretty rudimentary.

That was in 87, I had just moved down there a few months earlier and despite living and working in deepest South London my parents still phoned me to check I was OK!
I think smoking on the underground was banned soon afterwards.

[Benjamin_Nevis]

The mid to late 80s were a seemingly unending series of tragedies with massive loss of life, due to archaic/non existent safety practices. Zeebrugge, Kings Cross, Hillsborough (nearly twice) and there seemed to be an all too regular occurrence of train disasters.

[SlipperyP]

6 minutes ago, Day of the Lords said:

The mid to late 80s were a seemingly unending series of tragedies with massive loss of life, due to archaic/non existent safety practices. Zeebrugge, Kings Cross, Hillsborough (nearly twice) and there seemed to be an all too regular occurrence of train disasters.

and Piper Alpha

[Lurkst]

27 minutes ago, Day of the Lords said:

The mid to late 80s were a seemingly unending series of tragedies with massive loss of life, due to archaic/non existent safety practices. Zeebrugge, Kings Cross, Hillsborough (nearly twice) and there seemed to be an all too regular occurrence of train disasters.

 

19 minutes ago, SlipperyP said:

and Piper Alpha

Lockerbie and Kegworth too.

 

[GordonD]

And the Space Shuttle Challenger. Loss of life not on the same scale as the others but half the schoolkids in America watched it on live TV.

[Jacksgranda]

Made a change from seeing their president/president's assassin/presidential candidate getting shot, I suppose.

[GordonD]

33 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

Made a change from seeing their president/president's assassin/presidential candidate getting shot, I suppose.

I miss those days.

[BFTD]

Worth reminding people of when they go off on a rant about health and safety.

Generally speaking, if businesses aren't legally obliged to care about anything other than money, they aren't going to.

[Fullerene]

Bhopal and Chernobyl were also that decade.   

[Dunfermline Don]

The mid to late 80s were a seemingly unending series of tragedies with massive loss of life, due to archaic/non existent safety practices. Zeebrugge, Kings Cross, Hillsborough (nearly twice) and there seemed to be an all too regular occurrence of train disasters.

But we still got to go the pub and watch the football! [emoji22]