The other, situated by the main entrance, was donated by the club after its 7.5million (13million today) rebuilding of the original main stand in 2002. The worst fire disaster in English football history played out on live television on May 11, after Valley Parade's main stand caught fire during a match between Bradford City and Lincoln City on . 1.7M subscribers in the CatastrophicFailure community. Bradford City stadium fire | Football Wiki | Fandom We accepted it was an accident, nobody wanted to blame the club because it was the club we wanted to support. Bits of my arms, bits of my legs, part of my face, part of my scalp. I had no idea. An ancient wooden spectator stand and a dropped cigarette - the ingredients for one of Britain's deadliest soccer tragedies. [45] In total, 28 police officers and 22 supporters, who were publicly documented as having saved at least one life, later received police commendations or bravery awards. "I'm sorry to spoil what is obviously a very good story, but I'm afraid it is nonsense for many reasons.". We didn't know how serious it was.". He saw smoke coming from a small area of the stand and thought that someone had let off a flare. (2015), 2003 Football League Third Division play-off final, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bradford_City_stadium_fire&oldid=1141323458, Fire disasters involving barricaded escape routes, Pages containing London Gazette template with parameter supp set to y, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2010, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2021, Articles needing additional references from May 2018, All articles needing additional references, Articles needing additional references from December 2018, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Fan attempted to extinguish a lit cigarette, it slipped through floorboards and fell on rubbish, igniting it. [citation needed] Spectators later spoke of initially feeling their feet becoming warmer; one of them ran to the back of the stand for a fire extinguisher but found none. [52], On 1 May 2010, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the fire the football TV show Football Focus was hosted from Valley Parade by Dan Walker, the show included interviews with Terry Yorath and John Hendrie. The fundraising events included a reunion of the 1966 World Cup Final Starting XI that began with the original starting teams of both England and West Germany, and was held at Leeds United's stadium, Elland Road, in July 1985 to raise funds for the Appeal fund. He agreed that the inquiry into Bradford, led by the judge Oliver Popplewell, was inadequate and that there are many unanswered questions. [26], In July 1985, an inquest was held into the deaths; at the hearings the coroner James Turnbull recommended a death by misadventure outcome, with which the jury agreed. ', Sports reporters covering the game also spoke of the disaster. Town began to paint two years ago, first of the old Bradford Park Avenue ground, before moving onto other stadiums. Fletcher, who was 12 at the time of the fire, does not make any direct allegations but he does believe Heginbotham's history with fires resulting in payouts of around 27m in today's terms warrants further investigation.

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