Something caught my eye, he later explained. Even the received wisdom is enough to make you rage against football's breathtaking complacency: the same complacency which would turn the terrace at Hillsborough into a killing ground, four years later. Learn more about merges. Ian says that Bantamspast is about much more than just the football: "It's where people come socially. Only now, in 56: The Story of the Bradford Fire (Bloomsbury, 16.99) has he completed a 15-year quest to challenge history's interpretation of why the fire broke out. The stand had been officially condemned and was due to be replaced with a steel structure after the season ended. May 11, 2019 #12 Erebus Full Member. So many youngsters died..very very sad. By this date the appeal fund set up for survivors had paid out more than 4m with further payouts expected as the effects of physical and mental injury were determined. We had to run up the stairs, through the office doors and out onto the street. This Forum is the main messageboard to discuss all things Claret and Blue and beyond . by tim_noone Thu May 10, 2018 11:53 pm, Post "Yes you've already told us you were concerned," the inquiry's QC effectively says, before he moves the conversation along. Share. contact IPSO here, 2001-2023. "[28], West Yorkshire Metropolitan County Council was found to have failed in its duty under the Fire Precautions Act 1971. Head Physiotherapist: Dayle Avison. inaccuracy or intrusion, then please On the pitch, referee Norman Glover had no option but to stop the game as the horror unfolded in front of both sets of players who could feel the heat from the flames even from the other side of the ground. Lincoln City's board responded by committing 1.1million (3.5million today) to their ground's renovation in the year that immediately followed the fire at Valley Parade, and over the following decade made improvements that eventually totalled 3million. Read more aboutresponsible gambling. The speed of the fire was astonishing. Or as a football commentator for that matter. House Prices in Ormondroyd Avenue, Wibsey, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD6 Properties in Ormondroyd Avenue had an overall average price of 128,000 over the last year. by Pad1951 Fri May 11, 2018 9:15 am, Post Most of those who escaped onto the pitch were saved.[10]. The tender that was won by the University of Bradford to create a LOD3 digital twin of the city will see the area shown within the following map captured. Bradford fan David Pendleton, then aged 21, was at the game that day in the main stand and remembers how something which initially appeared trivial quickly became a desperate situation. Firefighters from across West Yorkshire tackle huge blaze A large fire involving thousands of scrap tyres has forced schools to close and caused traffic disruption in Bradford. [5] However, he also warned the club of a build-up of litter beneath the stand because of a gap between the seats. When Bradford City played Lincoln City at Valley Parade on May 11th, 1985, what should have been an afternoon of celebration quickly turned into one of the worst disasters ever seen at a British football ground. They are performed once every 10 years. by bfcmik Fri May 11, 2018 11:05 am, Post New legislation was introduced with the immediate closure of all wooden stands deemed unsafe, the banning of smoking within other wooden stands and the banning of any new wooden stands being built at all sports grounds. by tim_noone Fri May 11, 2018 11:37 pm, Powered by phpBB Forum Software phpBB Limited, This Forum is the main messageboard to discuss all things Claret and Blue and beyond. All that was left of the. In terms of property types, flats in BD6 1HR sold for an average of 44,840 and terraced houses for 78,507. One letter from the council said the problems "should be rectified as soon as possible"; a second said: "A carelessly discarded cigarette could give rise to a fire risk." As the blaze spread, the wooden stands and roofcovered with layers of highly flammable bituminous roofing feltquickly went ablaze. [34], During the case, Sir Joseph Cantley stated that: "It is only right that I should say that I think it would be unfair to conclude that Heginbotham, Tordoff, the Board of Directors, or any of them, were intentionally and callously indifferent to the safety of spectators using the stand. It was appalling that public money was given to the club while it was still owned by the same shareholders under whose direction the fire had happened. A sad, sad day in the history of English football. A capacity 6,000 crowd attended a multi-denominational memorial service, held on the pitch in the sunny shadow of the burnt out stand at Valley Parade in July 1985. Reading back the transcript in a 21st-century, Hillsborough Inquiry environment you expect this to be the moment when Popplewell pushes Woolley to elaborate. It was Fletcher's mother, Susan, who had always said that she did not believe the fire was an accident and who talked of the other blazes at businesses owned or linked to Stafford Heginbotham, the Bradford City chairman of the day. The 1984/85 season had been one of the most successful in Bradford City's 82-year history. They all ventured back. The majority of sales in Ormondroyd Avenue during the last year were semi-detached properties, selling for an average price of 130,000. [29] The Health and Safety Executive who were also part of the legal action were found to be non-liable. Deborah A Ormondroyd. by tim_noone Thu May 10, 2018 11:42 pm, Post He was Leicester's record signing in 1992 when he joined from Derby for 350,000. It provides football coaching and education to young people, works with youngsters aged between 16 and 18 on the National Citizen Service and has done several projects in the local community. [56], On 17 April 2015, retired Detective Inspector Raymond Falconer, in a report by the Bradford Telegraph and Argus, said the police were aware of an Australian man who admitted to starting the fire. ", ""This is more about the fans, the people and the ground - even the people who don't come to the ground."". ", Ian says he's hoping the Bantamspast project will look at a side of the club which hasn't been revealed before: "This is more about the fans, the people and the ground - even the people who don't come to the ground.". Thoughts and prayers to the 56 who lost their lives in this truly awful and harrowing tragedy. It was a massive tragedy for everybody at the club.". After the fire, Bradford City also announced they would thereafter play with a black trim on their shirt sleeves as a permanent memorial to those who had died. "In memory of the 56 people who went to the match on a Saturday and never returned home." [4] Football ground writer Simon Inglis had described the view from the stand as "like watching football from the cockpit of a Sopwith Camel" because of its antiquated supports and struts. He went on to state: "In 1985 fire investigation in Britain was in its infancy and some would say at that time most fire investigators were not much more than dust-kickers. Jane Sampson (18) William James West (78) You could hardly breathe. [32] Speaking at the close of the case, the Judge said "They (the club) were at fault, no one in authority seemed to have appreciated the fire hazard. It occurred during a league match, on Saturday, 11 May 1985, killing 56 and injuring at least 265. We will review the memorials and decide if they should be merged. The fact is that no one person was concerned with the safety of the premises. And there are also repeated references to the smell of burning plastic. . The inquiry into the disaster, chaired by Sir Oliver Popplewell and known as the Popplewell Inquiry,[25] led to the introduction of new legislation to improve safety at the UK's football grounds. A large fire broke out Thursday morning after an apparent explosion at a commercial building complex in Bradford. The play reflects that it had been "the Yorkshire way" not to make a fuss, to bear a loss and move on. Performance Analyst: Scott Dyer. Data returned from the Piano 'meterActive/meterExpired' callback event. The play, entitled simply The 56, does not seek to make melodrama out of that 11 May afternoon at Valley Parade, when fans arrived to celebrate Bradford's promotion from the Football League's division 3. Forty-year-old Gerald Ormondroyd also died that day, along with his 12-year old twin sons Richard and Robert, just two of ten families to lose more than one member at Valley Parade.. A total of 56 fans died in the fire on May 11, 1985, in a match between Bradford City and Lincoln City, with around 265 more injured. Thick, black . Uncensored coverage of the fire was transmitted minutes after the event on World of Sport and the BBC's Grandstand after the video cassette was physically driven to Yorkshire Television. Some of the local residents opened their houses so people could make phone calls, but until I arrived home my mum and my brother had no idea whether I was alive or dead.. [47] Scriptwriters of the play spent hours with the survivors and victims families. Valley Parade during the early 1990s, after it had been redeveloped following the fire. For the 30th anniversary of the fire a new version of "You'll Never Walk Alone" was recorded at Voltage Studios in Bradford. We were sat in our football kit, we didnt know what to do. Edmond Fletcher (63) Agree with the above, the most horrific scenes ever seen at football. This is according to the current Zoopla estimates. View James Ormondroyd's profile on LinkedIn, the world's largest professional community. He became famous for his height and build, in a similar manner to that of Peter Crouch. It is important that we continue to promote these adverts as our local businesses need as much support as possible during these challenging times. Bradford City stadium fire: The untold stories of the 1985 fire that devastated Valley Parade Thirty years after football's 'forgotten tragedy', the truth of what exactly happened when 56. RIP to those who died and condolences to all persons connected to Bradford City Football Club. ", Ian Ormondroyd is searching for Valley Parade memories, A Bradford landmark - and a focus for many memories. 1 . Born in Bradford, Yorkshire, Ormondroyd played for Bradford City, Oldham Athletic, Aston Villa, Derby County, Leicester City, Hull City and Scunthorpe United. "The family photographs seemed to mock you, too. [13], The match kicked off at 3:04pm and after forty minutes of the first half, the score remained 00,[14] in what was described as a drab affair with neither team threatening to score. Ian Ormondroyd, Bantamspast From the tragic fire at Valley Parade in May 1985 to the club's slide from the Premier League to administration in more recent years, people will obviously have many. "I think the fire will play a big part in it. by Lord Beamish Fri May 11, 2018 2:35 pm, Post . Fletcher has taken facts and presented them in such a way that it should make it moralistically impossible for this incident not to be looked at again. "Official Featherstone Rovers RLFC Web Site First Team Squad", "Ormondroyd junior the 'big daddy' of the family at 17 stone", "Much-changed Featherstone ready for Bradford Bulls test", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ian_Ormondroyd&oldid=1015639568, *Club domestic league appearances and goals, correct as of 10:00, 22 November 2007 (UTC), This page was last edited on 2 April 2021, at 16:48. [11], The disaster also had a long-lasting effect on the fans. I remember watching it unfold on tv, it was heartbreaking. due to the harrowing nature. He says he wants people to "look back on it in decades to come and think that somebody did some good work here and that the local fans and local people showed what the club meant to them and how much the club meant to the local community. As he received the injured at Bradford Royal Infirmary he was able to call upon 10% of the UK's population of plastic surgeons. Frederick Hindle (76) Above all else, it is a beautifully observed and incredibly detailed memoir of a son's relationship with the father he lost at the age of 12. [2] The main stand was described as a "mammoth structure", but was unusual for its time because of its place on the side of a hill. [8][9] In the crowd were local dignitaries and guests from three of Bradford's twin townsVerviers in Belgium, and Mnchengladbach and Hamm in West Germany. Or for a full-blown 91-day inquiry like the one which investigated the 1987 fire at London's King's Cross St Pancras Tube station, though Bradford claimed twice as many lives. The explosion and fire was reported shortly after 10:30 a.m. at Student Transportation of America (formerly Valley Transportation) located at 2345 Route 114 in Bradford, the state fire marshal's office said. She told the schoolchildren how she had travelled widely in the years after her husband and sons had gone, how that helped sustain her, and how they must think to travel and discover the world too. The footage never gets any less shocking. Instead, there is nothing. This site is part of Newsquest's audited local newspaper network. The way football is run is, and always has been, scandalous. Ian says that Bantamspast is about much more than just the football: "It's where people come socially. John Hughes (64) [46], In 2014, the theatre company Funny You Should Ask (FYSA) premiered their heartfelt tribute to the 56 people who died at the fire. [citation needed] Mathew Wildman, aged 17 at the time of the fire, commented that "I must have had five different experiments carried out on me with all sorts of new techniques for skin grafts and I had potions injected into me that helped my face repair naturally over time. "I became an adult overnight at 12 and I'm still there," Fletcher says, and you wonder what's next, now that the book which has become his life's work is published. Criticising Bradford City during the case, Mr. Michael Ogden QC, highlighted that the Club 'gave no or very little thought to fire precautions', despite repeated warnings. Ian Ormondroyd, Bradford City Community Foundation manager and former Bantams striker, echoed the call for residents to come forward and contribute to the project. And so it has been that while Liverpool supporters' refusal to accept the received narrative of Hillsborough the stadium disaster 40 miles north across Yorkshire in which 96 died has made it a source of anger and liberation at the heart of the national consciousness, Bradford became the forgotten tragedy. [15] They included three who tried to escape through the toilets, 27 who were found by exit K and turnstiles 6 to 9 at the rear centre of the stand, and two elderly people who had died in their seats. Horrific, harrowing scenes intensified by the speed at which the fire spread. But the scene became progressively horrendous, grotesque, and I was having to describe things you couldnt possibly imagine.. What started as smoke rising from a r. The 1985 inquiry into the tragedy headed by Sir Oliver Popplewell concluded that it was an accident, probably started by a spectator dropping a cigarette into rubbish that had accumulated under an old timber stand. Bradford City FC Crowds on the pitch at the Valley Parade stadium after a stand caught fire Getty Images. It's thirty three years since those horrific scenes at valley parade.young Lads dads and grandads young girls and women perished.56.and over 250 injured lets remember and not forget them. This biographical article related to association football in England, about a forward born in the 1960s, is a stub. The Bradford Disaster Appeal fund, set up within 48hours of the disaster, eventually raised over 3.5million (11.3million today). They were immediately promoted back to the Football League in 1988, and survived for 23 years before being relegated again in 2011. Which memorial do you think is a duplicate of Gerald Ormondroyd (201296072)? Anne Robinson (pictured with Mr Ormondroyd) moved into the family home near Bradford, West Yorkshire, to care for his wife Donna. Post Death Notice. It's with that in mind that Ian's Bantamspast project is underway in Bradford. The fire of 1985 will also certainly figure highly in Bantamspast, says Ian: "A chap rang me up about a week ago and he used to live on Cornwall Terrace, just at the back of the ground. ", On 26 January 2016, the IPCC declined calls for an investigation and published its full response online. Peter Anthony Halliday (34) It was the brainchild of Bradford City fan Lloyd Spencer with all profits going to the Bradford Royal Infirmary Burns Unit.[43]. That was nothing compared with the time it took to interview witnesses in the Hillsborough Inquiry.".