When you see the names of the poor victims, you can see young lads died with their grandads - very very sad. Bradford have been so dignified in their mourning - unlike victimpool. Also, the Bradford stadium designer was Archibald Leitch, the man whose stadium design at Ibrox led to the 1971 disaster!
Archie Leitch designed umpteen stadia all over the UK. Rangers made the error of reinforcing barriers that kept collapsing with railway sleepers. When they didn't collapse, they caused a crush. Bradford was caused by a void under the main stand that filled with litter over the years, somebody put a *** out, and it lit all the rubbish and the stand went up in flames in about 3 mins. Leitch also designed: Anfield, Liverpool Arsenal Stadium, Highbury, London Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough Bramall Lane, Sheffield Cardiff Arms Park, Cardiff Celtic Park, Glasgow Craven Cottage, Fulham, London Dalymount Park, Dublin Deepdale, Preston The Den, New Cross, London Dens Park, Dundee The Dell, Southampton Ewood Park, Blackburn The Double Decker stand (The Kop), Filbert Street, Leicester Fratton Park, Portsmouth Goodison Park, Liverpool Hampden Park, Glasgow Home Park, Plymouth Ibrox Park, Glasgow Hillsborough Stadium, Sheffield Lansdowne Road, Dublin Leeds Road, Huddersfield Molineux, Wolverhampton Old Trafford, Trafford, Greater Manchester Park Avenue, Bradford Roker Park, Sunderland Rugby Park, Kilmarnock Saltergate, Chesterfield Selhurst Park, South Norwood, London Somerset Park, Ayr Stamford Bridge, Walham Green, London Starks Park, Kirkcaldy Twickenham Stadium, Twickenham, London Tynecastle Stadium, Edinburgh Valley Parade, Bradford Villa Park, Birmingham West Ham Stadium, Custom House, London White Hart Lane, Tottenham, London Windsor Park, Belfast please log in to view this image
Archie Leitch was a bit of a **** by the sounds of it. But you're right, Bradford have always shown an enormous amount of dignity even when a few short years after the tragedy Leeds fans thought it was funny setting fire to a refreshment stall during an away game at Valley Parade and taunting the Bradford fans with rather unsavoury songs.
When I fist did my offshore survival course 21 years ago as part of the fire training we had to watch the whole thing through. 6 years after, the image of the policeman with his hair on fire still shocked me.
Weren't Bradford celebrating promotion prior to the game? Just seen on the news, 5 kids between the ages of 5-10 killed in a house fire in Derby, the mother has been arrested I think. What a world.
On 11 May 1985, a tiny trail of smoke started rising from the front of the rear section of Valley Parade's G Block, in which 12 year old Martin Fletcher, sat, with his Dad, John, 34, Brother, Andrew, 11, Uncle, Peter, 32 & Grandad, Eddie 63 - Five minutes later, all but Martin would be dead, as the Bradford Fire Disaster that followed claimed 56 lives. Remarkably Martin escaped a smoke filled corridor to reach the front of the stand, but by the time he reached its pitchside wall, his cap started burning, as his tar splattered jacket and scarf started smouldering - Only the quick brave actions of police officers and supporters, who threw him over the wall, before dragging him onto the pitch, where they knocked off his blazing cap, before twice rolling over his smouldering body, allowed him to escape with minor burns. http://www.bradfordtimeline.co.uk/fire.htm
Just watched a clip of it on YouTube, tragic. Some of the comments below made me laugh though. Spastic
Jesus wept. As TC pointed out Bradford FC and the city itself have been very dignified unlike a certain club and city on Merseyside. This tragedy was equally as bad as Hillsborough but like Heysel never gets a mention.
"This is a burning hell...." Footage of the Bradford fire, the stand went up in minutes and there seemed little preparation for what happened. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLjquReTHcU&feature=related
There was a book "football grounds of England & Wales" by Simon Inglis published in 1983. On Valley Parade he wrote about the piles of accumulated rubbish under the stands, and how one day there could be problems. Sadly nothing was done and the rest is history.
We had a fire fighting course at work a few months back, the guy that done the course showed the footage of the fire & said it took the fire services 17 minutes to get there from a couple of streets away. There was two off duty firemen in the crowd & no-one phoned the brigade thinking that the next person had allready done so.
