Prologue
Bradford City had been promoted to the Third Division Championship and this day deserved to go down in history as a day marked with celebration, however, quite the opposite happened and here you are reading about the disaster that broke down as a shockwave around the world. The Bradford City FC stadium fire was the second-worst sporting tragedy in England, after Hillsborough. This is a story of those who went to a football match in Bradford on this day and never returned home.
Backstory
On a fateful day, more than 11,000 spectators were present at Valley Parade. Bradford born captain Peter Jackson was presented with the Championship trophy by the Football League’s Life President at the time, Digg Wragg. But who knew that the team’s achievements were so tragically overshadowed.
The match began at dot 3:04 pm and forty minutes into the first half, the score was still 0–0. The audience was cheering for their respective teams and the atmosphere on the ground was tensely cheerful. Just five minutes before the half-time, people saw something strange. It was a glowing light, noticed about three rows from the back of block G. In an interview, describing the cause of the fire, television commentator, John Helm, said, “A man from Australia visiting his son got two tickets to the game. He lit a cigarette and when it was coming to an end he put it down onto the floorboard and tried to put his foot on it to put it out. It slipped through a hole in the floorboard. A minute later he saw a small plume of smoke so he poured his coffee on it and so did his son. It seemed to put it out. But a minute or so later there was suddenly a bigger whoosh of smoke so they went to get a steward. By the time they got back, the whole thing had taken off.”
You would be wondering how come the fire got so big within a small span of time; well, owing to the windy conditions and the woodwork, it took less than four minutes for the entire wood stand to get engulfed in smoke and fire.
The Fire accident
A single cigarette costed 56 lives. People were running onto the pitch with their clothes burning in a fire; some were trapped at the back of the stand; some were running with the smashing crowds. This is the picture on 11th May 1985, Valley Parade, Bradford. A total of 56 people lost their lives, these included, three people who tried to escape through the toilets, 27 of them were found near exit K, and two elderly people who dies in their seats. More than 265 supporters were injured.
Aftermath
The inquiry that was launched after the disaster led to the legislation that safety at football grounds should be improved. This was followed by the new rules, banning the use of new wooden grandstands at all sports venues in the United Kingdom, and banning cigarette smoking on all grounds with wooden stands. The jury also found that the club had been warned prior to the incident as well that the rubbish beneath the stands posed a fire risk.
Who was held responsible? The court held the club responsible for the incident, if not completely, then at least to be two thirds responsible for ignoring the repeated warnings and having paid very little attention to the fire precautions. The local council was held one-third responsible. The effect of the fire on the victim, on those who experienced it was grave. Many suffered from survivor’s guilt, many took counseling for decades to move on from the worst chapter of their lives. With 97 deaths and 766 injuries, it has the highest death toll in British sporting history.
Glossary
- Hillsborough Disaster: a fatal human crush during a football match at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, on 15 April 1989.
References and Attributions
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_City_stadium_fire
- https://www.bradfordcityafc.com/club/valley-parade-fire-disaster/
- https://www.fbu.org.uk/history/bradford-city-fc-stadium-fire
- Cover image: Memorialto_Valley_Parade_Fire,_Bradford(Taken_by_Flickr_user_25th_February_2012).jpg) by Flickr user:Tim Green aka atouch via Wikimedia Commons
Originally published at https://www.backstory.today on May 11, 2022.