Makes for interesting reading

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DarloPeGi
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by DarloPeGi » Wed Apr 15, 2015 2:59 pm

I remember hearing the news about this as I left Feethams that day. Think we had just beaten Stockport and as we walked up Victoria Road, my Dad had the transistor radio on which was relaying the news from Bradford. The extent of the tragedy wasn't fully known at that point and it was a short while later when I found out people had died. The scene on television of that poor Bradford fan on fire in front of the stand was horrific.

These new revelations put a frightening slant on the whole story.

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Mr_Tibbs
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by Mr_Tibbs » Wed Apr 15, 2015 4:28 pm

I remember that day too.

For those who haven't clicked the link this is the revelation by a survivor who lost three generations of his own family in the fire that the then owner of Bradford City had about 8 other businesses go up in flames before this terrible tragedy. He made about £27 million (in today's money) in insurance claims.

He was also told to improve the safety of the ground and had learned two days before the fire it would cost £2m to bring the ground up to safety standards required by Bradford’s promotion from the old Third Division that season.

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ArmchairDiehard
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by ArmchairDiehard » Wed Apr 15, 2015 4:42 pm

A very harrowing read. Some rather serious implications there too.
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Beano
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by Beano » Wed Apr 15, 2015 5:53 pm

When you add the context of his prior and post fires it is massively concerning and stomach churning.

Also, how could a credible inquiry take place only 5 weeks after the event?


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Darlo_Pete
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by Darlo_Pete » Wed Apr 15, 2015 6:15 pm

I was at Valley Parade the week before when we played them and I sat in that stand very near to where they reckoned the fire started. So it came as a massive shock when the fire happened a week later and the realisation that it could have been me and my mates that never came back from the game.

lo36789
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by lo36789 » Wed Apr 15, 2015 7:27 pm

Thought it had been attributed to fans who were smoking in the stand on the day as the cause of the fire?

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Mr_Tibbs
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by Mr_Tibbs » Wed Apr 15, 2015 8:15 pm

lo36789 wrote:Thought it had been attributed to fans who were smoking in the stand on the day as the cause of the fire?
That's sounding more and more like a whitewash:
The disaster at Valley Parade came at a time, according to Fletcher’s evidence, when the businessman was in desperate financial trouble, unable to pay his workforce beyond that month. Heginbotham had learned two days before the fire it would cost £2m to bring the ground up to safety standards required by Bradford’s promotion from the old Third Division that season. Yet this has never been reported and did not feature in the Popplewell Inquiry, chaired by the then high court judge Oliver Popplewell, which held its investigation only three weeks after the fire.

The inquiry heard only five days of testimony and concluded the fire was probably started by a match, a cigarette or pipe tobacco slipping through gaps in the floorboards on to litter that had built up over the previous 20 years. Fletcher does not accept that version and quotes a report by the Fire Research Station, a government-funded body, that “features of the Bradford fire required a detail of understanding greater than that presented to the formal inquiry”.

lo36789
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by lo36789 » Wed Apr 15, 2015 8:58 pm

I dunno if it was planted why wouldn't he just do it at the end as people are walking out or something?

I know some people are evil but to take 56 lives for the sake of an insurance claim feels a stretch in anyone's book. There were 164 others hours that week when that could have been staged and nobody would have been hurt.

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davidcorks 40yard OG
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by davidcorks 40yard OG » Fri Apr 17, 2015 4:56 pm

Darlo_Pete wrote:I was at Valley Parade the week before when we played them and I sat in that stand very near to where they reckoned the fire started. So it came as a massive shock when the fire happened a week later and the realisation that it could have been me and my mates that never came back from the game.

what the hell are you on pete? we wernt in the same division as Bradford 84-85 season...bout 1991 before we were ???
So no you were not there a week before :evil:
utter prat :twisted:
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by Darlogramps » Fri Apr 17, 2015 6:38 pm

davidcorks 40yard OG wrote:
Darlo_Pete wrote:I was at Valley Parade the week before when we played them and I sat in that stand very near to where they reckoned the fire started. So it came as a massive shock when the fire happened a week later and the realisation that it could have been me and my mates that never came back from the game.

what the hell are you on pete? we wernt in the same division as Bradford 84-85 season...bout 1991 before we were ???
So no you were not there a week before :evil:
utter prat :twisted:
A very rare thing, but I'm in agreement with you.

Darlington weren't in the same division that season, and didn't play them in a cup competition either. The last time Darlo played them at Valley Parade before the fire was in 1982, more than three years before it happened.

The game the week before was Bradford v Reading (http://www.11v11.com/teams/bradford-cit ... eason/1985) so unless that was the game he was at, it appears Pete has made a mistake.
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Darlo_Pete
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Re: Makes for interesting reading

Post by Darlo_Pete » Fri Apr 17, 2015 7:18 pm

Ok I'm sorry, I must have got it wrong. But I do know that I was in that stand at one Darlo game, before the fire destroyed it.

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