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Litany of sports stadia tragedies |
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The Bradford City football stadium fire on May 11, 1985 is etched in the memory of all who saw those shocking TV images. FIRE correspondent Tony Prosser looks back on stadium disasters including Ibrox, Heysal and Happy Valley in Hong Kong and the eventual impact they had on fire safety standards in sports stadia
THE FIRE ATVALLEY PARADE FOOTBALL stadium on May 11 1985, has a unique place in firefighting history – no amateur mobile phone pictures or shaky, hand-held video shots were necessary.
The horror was captured live on TV as Bradford City, having recently been successful in getting promoted to the Second Division (equivalent to the Championship), played Lincoln City. It starkly reminds us of the speed with which fire develops and graphically shows the consequences of failing to appreciate the dangers of fire. The five minutes of footage that capture the period from the discovery of the fire to full involvement of the stand with images that included examples of selfless heroism, a police officer with his hair spontaneously igniting from radiated heat and stunned disbelief of victims and bystanders alike. Twenty-three years later the film still has the power to shock.
Valley Parade Tinderbox
The stadium was 77 years old and had a pitched timber roof covered with tarpaulins sealed with tar. There had been many stadia of this type in use at the time. Valley Parade was different in one key respect in that it had been built over the side of a hill, with a significant void beneath the seating area. The rear exit corridor was at the top of the stand. Legislation was already in place to deal with Division one and two stadia – the Safety of Sports Grounds Act 1975 required safety certificates for all stadia with a capacity of over 10,000. The Act was introduced as a response to the Ibrox Park incident in 1971 where 66 Glasgow Rangers fans died as a result of anti-crush barriers failing during a football match. Because the Ibrox disaster was non-fire related, the local authority (the enforcing authority) was required to consult with the police service and the building control authority but not the fire authority.
The conditions in the certificate included fire prevention aspects including means of escape and the maintenance of those means of escape.Where a safety certificate was in force, the 1975 Act removed the need for the Fire Precautions Act 1971 (FPA) to apply. Section 10 of the FPA, however, could have been used by West Yorkshire Fire Authority if it had satisfied that the stadium posed an ‘immediate and appreciable risk of danger’ (Popplewell). Third Division clubs were not designated under the act, a recognition of the relative poverty of the lower division clubs. In a supreme irony, as a result of their successful promotion bid, work was due to start on upgrading the stadium on Monday May 13! The Health and Safety Executive had inspected the premises in 1981 and 1984 and recorded that there was a substantial risk to the public which was ‘fire… and means of access’. This key information was not passed to other enforcing authorities.
Fire Spread
The fire broke out just before half time in Block G at one end of the stand in row I or J. Rubbish, accumulated below the stand over many years (a 1968 Bradford Telegraph and Argus, was found among the debris), was thought to have been ignited by a discarded cigarette or match. Pictures of the fire in its early stages showed fans watching the flames develop, unwilling to evacuate the stand. As the fire grew, realisation of the dangers became apparent to the wider crowd of spectators and evacuation of the immediate area began. At this point decisions were made by individuals that determined whether or not they survived – the majority of those who died did so by choosing to make their escape through the exit gates at the rear of the stand, gates that had been padlocked in an attempt to prevent unauthorised entry.
As the flames spread to the underside of the roof, a mass exodus started as the majority of the spectators climbed over the containment wall and onto the pitch. The tar used in the roof covering both spread the fire and melted causing molten droplets to fall onto the fleeing football fans. The flames raced along the underside of the stand, the flame front accelerated and achieved a speed as fast as a running person. Although there was confusion among the crowd during the escape, there was no mass panic – film of spectators helping each other escape has since been used as vital evidence in behavioural studies of real people under stressful conditions. The presence of a large number of off-duty firefighters and over 100 police officers was said to make a vital contribution to the saving of many lives and preventing the disaster becoming worse. Many of the 200 injured suffered radiant heat burns as a result of the reflected heat from the stadium roof and the film of a police officer’s hair igniting as he ran from the stadium is truly horrific.
Popplewell Report
The first fire service response to the incident was a pump that had been less than half a mile from the station. On arrival the officer requested additional resources and set into hydrants. The most sustainable water supply was from a 12 inch main about half a mile from the ground which required additional pumps. Due to the rapidity of the spread of fire, by the time the water supplies were sufficient, there was little opportunity of saving the stand. Such was the public shock of the disaster that politicians felt pressure to take immediate action. The then Home Secretary (the Home Office was the Government Department responsible for Fire Matters), Leon Brittan, ensured that immediate steps were taken.
These included the designation of all grounds of football clubs in Divisions 3 and 4, plus Divisions 1 and 2 of the Rugby League through the Sporting Events (Control of Alcohol) Bill which was rapidly passed. He also instructed that fire services were to inspect all uncertificated grounds to indicate their suitability. Major remedial works were required in some cases and several stands were closed down as a result of inspections. A wider range of sporting grounds were inspected including larger cricket grounds, rugby union grounds, motor racing circuits and a miscellany of other spectator venues. Among the more common failings were timber construction, inadequate means of escape, storage of combustible materials in unprotected voids. This indicated that the potential for a similar or worse disaster existed in many locations at the time of Valley Parade.
The enquiry into the Valley Parade fire was conducted by Mr Justice Oliver Popplewell.
The wide ranging enquiry also looked at the issue of crowd safety at football grounds. On the same day, a riot had broken out in St Andrews football ground, Birmingham between Birmingham City and Leeds United Fans. As the fighting spread, a brick wall collapsed on a young boy, killing him. Popplewell’s enquiry looked at both fire and violence issues. At its conclusion, the enquiry made a number of recommendations:
• Evacuation procedures should be part of police training and form a key aspect of the steward’s role. Much criticism was levelled at the amateur nature of stewarding at football grounds – stewards were generally fans who distributed programmes in exchange for free tickets to matches. Popplewell recommended that they also had training in fire precautions and firefighting
• The certifying authority should include police officers in the licensing team
• Roads within a quarter mile of the ground were to be kept free of parked vehicles. There had been suggestions that parked vehicles could have delayed the response of emergency services
• Managers of sports grounds should seek the assistance of fire services to provide suitable firefighting equipment. The lack of available fire extinguishers at Valley Parade was thought, however, to have had little or no impact upon the final result of the fire. Urgent consultation between the HSE, local authorities and fire authorities was recommended to co-ordinate and communicate the findings of inspections.
• All fire exits should be manned at all times and to be made immediately operable by anyone inside in an emergency
• Combustible construction methods should not be used in new stands
• Suitable number and size of exits should be provided
• No smoking should be allowed in the stands
• Consideration should be given as to how best to deal with temporary stands and marquees.
There were a number of knee jerk comments that optimistically suggested that the use of sprinklers would have prevented the disaster. These suggestions were rejected on the grounds that they had been considered previously (for general use) but disregarded due to the potential problem with vandalism by fans. Justice Popplewell, however, made two comments regarding the disaster that would resonate today. He concluded that if the GreenGuide, the supporting material that at the time underpinned the safety certificate, ‘had been complied with [at Valley Parade], this tragedy would not have occurred’. He also admitted ‘almost all the matters into which I have been asked to enquire and almost all the solutions I have proposed, have been previously considered by many distinguished inquiries over a period of 60 years’.
Fire Safety in Places of Sport
The Popplewell Report came before parliament and led to two important improvements – the introduction of The Fire Safety and Safety of Places of Sports Act 1987, and the revision of the GreenGuide.
Part 2 of the Fire Safety and Safety of Places of Sports Act has seven sections and abolishes the earlier distinction between stadiums and sports grounds. It allows the Home Secretary to fix the qualifying capacity, rather than embody 10,000 or another figure in the Act. Part 3 of The Fire Safety and Safety of Places of Sport Act 1987 was brought into force in 1988 and it relates to the safety of stands at sports grounds and includes a requirement for a stand (called a ‘Regulated Stand’) which provides covered accommodation for 500 or more spectators, to have a Safety Certificate from the local authority. Part 4 of the Act introduced indoor sports licences for ‘sports entertainment’. Originally produced after the Wheatley Report of 1972, TheGuide to Safety at SportsGrounds (the GreenGuide) was completely revised in the light of the Popplewell Report and was republished in 1986. It detailed guidance relating to entrances and exits, the structure of stands and buildings, stairways and ramps, the terraces, crush barriers and handrails and perimeter walls and fences.
HappyValley Disaster
Valley Parade was not without precedent. There has been a litany of sports grounds disasters in the preceding 100 years. The more significant were in Bolton, 1946, where two barriers collapsed and 33 fans were crushed – 85,000 spectators were in the 65,000 capacity stadium; in 1964, more than 300 fans were killed in Lima, Peru, during a riot caused by a controversial refereeing decision; and the Ibrox Disaster in 1971. The worse sporting ground disaster occurred in Hong Kong in 1918 at the Happy Valley racecourse, which resulted in the death of over 600 people. Many problems associated with the race course had been identified before the fire but ignored. Many of the conclusions reached by the enquiry that followed would be replicated nearly 70 years later in Bradford. The buildings in which the fire occurred on February 26, 1918 were known as matsheds – open sided constructions which served as spectator venues to watch races. Made principally of bamboo structural members and floors and with matted bamboo as roofing, the matsheds were readily combustible. The occupancy loading of the matsheds varied and were subject to overloading such as that which occurred on February 26. Just before 1500 one of the 13 matsheds stands in a linked complex 90 metres long, collapsed due to the imposed weight. The whole structure relied upon mutual support to ensure structural stability and integrity and once one stand collapsed the others followed like a pack of cards. Three thousand spectators became trapped in the tangle of bamboo poles and matting. Many self-rescued while others were pulled out by other survivors. Many hundreds however were trapped under the lower floors.
Fire broke out a minute or so following the collapse. The previous winter had seen little rainfall and the bamboo was timber dry. The light breeze blew towards the front of the stand. The fire engulfed the 90 metre structure within 20 minutes. A police sergeant tried to put out the fire when it was only one foot square in size but the water supplies were inadequate.Within 45 minutes the stands were reduced to ashes and between 604 and 614 people were dead. The coroner, in his summing up of the fire made the statement that the disaster could most “probably have been prevented by the exercise of foresight, and foresight which one might reasonably have expected before the event and which is certainly easy to expect after the event.” The lessons identified (but not necessarily learned) from the disaster included the need for non-combustible construction in sports grounds, the need to control smoking and cooking to prevent fires involving contents, the presence of firefighting staff and resources to control any outbreak of fire and to include the provision of adequate supplies of water. The issue of crowd control was also mentioned – specifically the need to limit the number of spectators in a premises and the need for a sufficient number of exits to allow for a rapid escape in the event of an emergency. Finally, it was recognised that there was a need for all relevant persons to liaise and coordinate the response and roles in managing the safety response at these premises. Anyone reading the reports of the Valley Parade, and Happy Valley enquiries can see the interchangability of many of the conclusions and lessons learned. Of course, fire was only one of the risks associated with sports stadia: Heysal, just a few days after Valley Parade and Hillsborough in 1989, showed that sports ground safety encompassed a wider range of risks. Perhaps the only difference between Happy Valley and Valley Parade was in the media portrayal of the event. The immediacy of the TV coverage and its graphic images meant that authorities and politicians were bound to act. A newspaper report from a far-flung corner of an empire could never be expected to have the same impact.
Fortunately, the effect of the Valley Parade fire has been to cause the safety measures to be put into place that have, to date, ensured the safety of spectators from the effects of fire since 1985.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of West Midlands Fire Service.
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