"He said he smoked a cigarette, dropped the cigarette onto the floor in front of him, went to put his foot on it, but it had unfortunately dropped through, he said, a knot hole." Retired detective inspector Raymond Falconer said a decision was made at the time not to release the name of the man who may have accidentally started the fire that killed 56 people.įalconer told the BBC: "He said he'd been at the match, he'd been sat in the stand, right where we knew the seat of the fire had taken place. This article was originally written in 2014 by previous editor, Adam Bannister, and has been updated as a timely reminder of the tragedy that took place.Police have revealed the identity of the man who they believe was responsible for starting the fire at Bradford City's stadium that killed 56 people, according to a documentary.Īn investigation into the 1985 fire at Valley Parade ruled the blaze started after a discarded cigarette fell through the wooden seating onto rubbish that had been accumulating for years.Ī retired officer has told a BBC documentary − Missed Warnings: The Bradford City Fire – police now believe the man who dropped the cigarette was an Australian man called Eric Bennett, who has since died. Too bad the improvements came too late for the 56 who lost their lives on. For all the anti-‘elf and safety bleating there is, the progress the industry has made has surely saved hundreds, if not thousands of lives – though of course there have still been many tragedies since and there is still much work to be done.
Looking back on the concerning health and safety measures at the time – there didn’t seem to be any – it’s worth reflecting on how far UK fire safety has come since. The club had apparently been warned on three separate occasions about the potential fire risk, twice by the Health and Safety Executive and once by the county council, between 1981 to 1984.Īnd the Safety of Sports Grounds Act introduced in the wake of the 1971 Ibrox disaster, which stipulated that wooden stands should be capable of evacuation in two and a half minutes, that all combustible material must be removed from beneath them, that all voids should be sealed and that no one should be more than 30 metres from the nearest manned exit, had clearly been ignored. All the more jarring then was the jubilant singing of many Bradford City fans on the pitch as half of their stadium burned – clearly ignorant of the loss of life occurring and something they’ve have had plenty of time to regret. Writing in the Guardian a few years ago, Daniel Taylor recalled the poignant story of a former classmate who had escaped the blaze but lost his dad, grandfather, uncle and younger brother in the disaster. The man, a retired mill worker, later died in hospital. The speed at which the fire develops – the entire stand is engulfed in flames in a matter of minutes – is staggering.Īt one point a crowd of police, stewards and supporters desperately tried to extinguish flames that had engulfed a supporter by hitting them with their jackets. It’s quite incongruous to hear the commentator switch from the cliched excitability of football-ese to the grave tones of a war correspondent. Remarkably the fixture was filmed by ITV – a rare thing in those days – and you can see footage of the fire unfold below. The rear exits, the police hadn’t realised, had actually been boarded up or padlocked. Others fled to the rear of the stand – to their doom. Just to give you an idea of how long the rubbish had been accruing, among the debris afterwards a copy of the Bradford Telegraph and Argus was found, dated 4 November 1968.Īs the fire – which was blamed on a dropped match – spread, most people scrambled desperately to the foot of the stand, climbing over advertising hoardings to the safety of the pitch. More incomprehensibly still, litter had been allowed to pile up beneath the stand – a ready-made bonfire just awaiting ignition. The stand, which had been condemned and was due for demolition (though it was still deemed good enough for football supporters for the time being), was made of timber – and this at a time when supporters were allowed to smoke freely on the terraces. The death toll was so high, the manner of their death so horrific and the litany of fire-safety neglect so appalling that it’s hard to understand why the disaster has not attracted anywhere near the level of coverage in the succeeding years that the Hillsborough disaster – rightly – has. On a fire erupted in the midst of a third-division tie between Bradford City and Lincoln City at Valley Parade, killing 54 home supporters and two Lincoln fans. Today marks the 35th anniversary of one of the worst disasters in the history of British football.
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