l'incendie de Bradford

le 11 mai 1985,il ya 20 ans aujourd'hui,56 personnes sont mortes à bradford dans une tribune en bois,aprés que le feu ait pris par un mégot dans un gobelet en plastique .le feu s'est étendu tout de suite à du papier puis à la tribune elle même.
en moins de 4 minutes,le feu a pris à toute la tribune.de nombreux fans se sont dirigés vers une grille close à l'arrière de la tribune.
ce leur fut fatal.
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Bradford remembers fire disaster
By Peter Scrivener
On Saturday, 11 May 1985, 11,076 football supporters set out to watch Bradford City play Lincoln City at Valley Parade.

Hundreds would not return home that night, 56 would never return home again.

It started out as a day of celebration with the Bantams parading the old Division Three championship trophy around the ground before kick-off - marking City's promotion into the second tier of English football for the first time since before the Second World War.

The game itself was a drab affair with neither side really threatening to score.

But with fans beginning to think about wandering off for a half-time cup of tea, heaven turned into hell.

A stray cigarette butt, discarded in a plastic cup, ignited rubbish that had piled up underneath City's antiquated main stand and within four minutes, flames had engulfed the wooden structure.

Supporters at the front of the stand spilled onto the pitch while others towards the back found their escape route blocked by locked gates.


The charred remains of the Edwardian stand stood eerily in the lights

The events that followed will live forever, not just in the memories of the players and supporters at the match, but everyone connected with the game.

City striker John Hawley pulled fans out of the stand while Stuart McCall was left wondering what had happened to his father.

The young midfielder left the ground, still in his kit, and drove to the Bradford Royal Infirmary.

From there, he was directed to the burns unit at Pinderfields hospital 15 miles away in Wakefield, where the most severely burnt had been taken.

His dad was wrapped in bandages and almost unrecognisable, but alive. Back in Bradford, Bantams captain Peter Jackson and players from both sides met their wives and girlfriends at the Belle Vue pub at the top of Valley Parade and watched as the true horror of the event unfolded on television.

There were many acts of heroism - 22 supporters received bravery awards - but stones were thrown at television commentator John Helm and the cameras while some fans were singing and dancing on the pitch, unaware of the scale of the disaster that was unfolding before their eyes.

And once the smoke had cleared, the charred remains of the Edwardian stand stood eerily in the lights - the cruel irony being that the steel to replace the roof of the stand the following Monday was lying in the car park behind it.

The Popplewell Committee of Inquiry was set up after the tragedy and found that City had been warned about the amount of rubbish accumulating under the stand.

Bradford's charity record
Celebrities including Paul McCartney and Rolf Harris got involved

And after taking into account the events at the European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium in Belgium just 18 days later, where 39 fans died following trouble between Liverpool and Juventus supporters, the Popplewell Report came before Parliament and gave rise to two important steps:

The Fire Safety and Safety of Places of Sports Act 1987 and the revision of the Green Guide issued by the Home Office.

But the immediate priority for Bradfordians was to help the families affected by the disaster.

Within 48 hours, an appeal fund had been set up.

Money poured in from solo donations, fund-raising events and proceeds from a re-recording of the Liverpool anthem You'll Never Walk Alone - £4m was raised.

The players themselves tirelessly visited fans at the Bradford Royal Infirmary and at Pinderfields in weeks that followed.

And they attended the funerals of the 54 supporters of Bradford and two from Lincoln who died.

The start of the new season saw Bradford fans travel to Huddersfield's ground at Leeds Road and Leeds' Elland Road stadium, for 'home' games before approval was given for the club to play a little closer to home at Bradford Northern rugby league club's Odsal Stadium.

But the one desire was to return to Valley Parade and build a stadium fitting to the memory of the 56 who lost their lives.

And after much wrangling (Bradford City Council was keen to see City stay at Odsal) the Bantams finally returned home on 14 December 1986 to play an England XI, which included the likes of Peter Shilton, Kevin Keegan, Tony Cottee and Neil Webb.

City triumphed 2-1 in front of a capacity 15,000 crowd.

Thankfully, lessons have been learnt from the Bradford fire and hopefully we will never see anything quite like it again.

As happens every year, a memorial service will take place in Bradford's Centenary Square at 11am on 11 May.

The Mayors of Bradford and Lincoln, City chairman Julian Rhodes, relatives of those who died, members of the emergency services and fans will lay wreaths.

And all City fans will pause again at 3.40pm to remember their fellow supporters who lost their lives.

Of all the stories of heroism and bravery that have emerged from the Bradford fire disaster, Matthew Wildman's is perhaps one of the most poignant and courageous.

Matthew came close to dying in the blaze, but he has turned his ordeal into a positive experience.

Aged 17 back in 1985, Matthew, who has rheumatoid arthritis, needed crutches to help him walk.

The fire started in the next block to where Matthew was sitting and he was immediately helped from his seat on the back row into a corridor in the back of the stand to retrieve his crutches.

It almost proved a fatal move.

"There was a big crush of people and I couldn't reach my crutches, so they were thrown to me, but then we found the back doors were still locked," Matthew told BBC Sport.

"I was popped to the floor like a pea and had lots of people standing on me and kicking me in the head, but that was not a bad thing as everybody stood up was choking on the smoke.

"I was shouting at people that I was down on the floor, but I didn't panic - I was more angry that people were not looking out for each other.

"Then somebody fell over me, realised I couldn't move, and dragged me out into the stand."

Matthew reached the front of the stand to be confronted by an eight-foot drop onto the concrete floor of the paddock below.

"That was the only time I really started to panic," he admitted.

"I looked down at my hands and they were bubbling like melting cheese, so I thought, it's all or nothing."

Matthew dived over the wall and was about to smash into the terrace when he was caught by David Hustler, a man he keeps in touch with to this day.

"That was the first time David saved me," Matthew continued.

"I was really badly burned from head to foot and put on a stretcher to be taken to the waiting ambulances on Midland Road."

Reaching the ambulances was an ordeal in itself.

"Because there were so many people on the pitch, I was carried at above head height and passed over the crowd - it was horrific, especially as I couldn't hold on with my hands being in the state they were," he continued.

"Inevitably I was dropped. But once again, David was there to catch me - I have the utmost respect for him."

Matthew eventually made it into an ambulance and was halfway to the burns unit at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield when news filtered through that they were full, so he was diverted to nearby Batley.

He said: "They had virtually written me off, but I survived the night and was taken to St Luke's hospital in Bradford the next day."

"That was a bit of a relief for the ward sister at Batley because I had a lot of biker friends and about 50 turned up at the hospital on the Sunday morning looking for me," he laughed.

And through it all, that is what impressed Matthew most - the spirit of the Bradford community in dealing with the aftermath of the disaster.

"I have never known anything like it, either before, or since," he said.

"Everybody in the city was devastated, but there was an amazing number of volunteers.

"There were not enough hospital staff to feed everybody who couldn't feed themselves due to the injuries on their hands.

"But I remember traffic wardens and lollipop ladies coming in so that each patient had somebody feeding them, and the money that had been donated to the disaster fund helped provide us with gourmet food.

"Even the fridges were full of beer and I remember one night, they stopped the medication and got everyone drunk!

"I still have terrible memories of the day, but it is the humanity of those that helped us that I reflect on.

"Even the barman at my local pub came up with a keg of beer one afternoon.

"He had set off with two, but as it was a hot day, one had blown up on him and he was soaked when he arrived.

"He put the keg down and told me to make it last a while as he had learned my age in the paper and told me I was now barred."

Matthew was also keen to praise Professor David Sharpe OBE and his team for their work in helping him recovery from his injuries.

Professor Sharpe helped found the Plastic Surgery and Burns Research Unit at the University of Bradford, a unit that is still at the forefront of caring for burns victims today, and he was awarded the OBE for his work in the months that followed the fire.

"The entire team was superb," said Matthew.

"They worked day and night until everyone had been seen as they only had a limited time to treat all the injuries.

"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."

Matthew spent more than two months recovering from his injuries, but he remained remarkably upbeat.

"There was only one day that it got to me - I was not put under a general anaesthetic, but I had four teams working on me - one on each limb," he said.

"But there were many positive things to come out of the disaster, such as the way people were looked after by others.

"And I want everyone to realise and see how much good there is in other people because I have seen it and it has helped me learn how to treat others."