stonerblue said:Blue Mist said:For all those who now think it could have been arson. Today 12/5 Five Live interviewed one of the cops who did the investigation, he states it was a terrible accident. The fan whose cigarette caused the fire has been interviewed, he realised immediately he dropped the cigarette what had happened and ran to the back off the stand to tell a steward. The top forensic bloke said then and maintains now he knew exactly where the fire started and how it started. He states it was a cigarette accidentally dropping through a hole.
Whilst it is very sad that a fan lost 3 of his family to the fire he is totally wrong to suggest it was anything other than a tragic accident and he should not be given any publicity in case people believe him.
A detailed scientific investigation into the causes of the Bradford stadium disaster cast statistical doubt on the claim that it was sparked inadvertently by a match igniting debris below Valley Parade’s seating, The Independent can reveal.
The fire, in which killed 56 supporters died, 30 years ago next month, was found by the official inquiry conducted by High Court judge Sir Oliver Popplewell to have been caused by debris beneath the seats in the main stand being accidentally set alight. But an investigation for Popplewell into the likely causes, published by the Department of the Environment’s Fire Research Station (FRS) 30 days after the tragedy and part of the body of evidence relating to the disaster at the National Archive in Kew, tested the likelihood of a match struck by a spectator still being alight when it fell to the floor. The experiments, which recreated the conditions at Valley Parade, found that 35 out of 48 matches tested “self-extinguished” before they reached the wooden platform beneath which debris lay.
That means only 27 per cent of matches were still alight when they reached the floor. Then one of those still alight would have had to fall through a gap between floorboards and ignite debris below to cause combustion.
The slim statistical basis appears to bear out the claims by Martin Fletcher, a survivor of the disaster who lost his father, brother, uncle and grandfather, that the investigation into the fire was inadequate. In his book 56 – The Story of the Bradford Fire, Fletcher finds that there had been eight other fires at businesses owned by or associated with Stafford Heginbotham, the late Bradford chairman. Fletcher says that the number of other fires was an extraordinary coincidence and that Popplewell’s inquiry should have investigated Heginbotham’s background.
Nowhere in the substantial body of FRS and Health and Safety Executive (HSE) papers at Kew is there any mention of such a possibility being investigated and discounted. But they do reveal the concerns of FRS director Dr David Woolley that he was being given too short a time to undertake a detailed enough investigation for Popplewell into how the fire could have started and consumed the stand at such extraordinary speed.
“We were concerned that there might be, because of the rapidity of the fire, a mechanism which was hitherto unknown to us,” Dr Woolley told the inquiry, which gave the FRS, based at Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, just four weeks to gather evidence and put Woolley through a mere two hours of questioning.
The FRS’s tests did not lead it to discount the hypothesis that a burning match might have caused the fire. Its report concludes: “It would seem quit feasible for a lighted match, dropped through a gap in the flooring of the stand to ignite rubbish beneath.” The body’s “technical assessments” found that the possibility of a match causing the fire would have increased “markedly” if the head of the match was accidentally broken in the act of striking it. They concluded that a dropped cigarette would need “good contact with the material [it sets fire to]” to cause a fire and says that pipe material was a more likely cause of the fire than matches. “The glowing zone may be larger than with cigarettes. The effect… will be greater.”
The FRS’s statistical data demonstrates the need to have put the body’s evidence to greater scrutiny. If a match was the cause there is also the unanswered question of how tens of thousands could have been thrown to the floor since the stadium was opened in 1908 – never causing a fire before. By some estimates as many as 1.25 million people smoked there over the years. There were no ashtrays and no smoking restrictions.
A view of the Bradford City stadium fire A view of the Bradford City stadium fire
The Kew Archive also reveals correspondence from the Timber Research and Development Association which had also rejected the theory that the ignition of debris under the stands had caused the fire.
Why are the Independent quoting stats about a match ?
A man came forward, everyone knows his name and knows he is not some cover up guy. He states he dropped his cigarette. He went to a steward immediately he realised he had started a fire.
They started an evacuation immediately but within 4 minutes the whole stand was ablaze.
The top forensic scientist agrees that this is what happened.
The police undertook a reconstruction and agreed that this is what happened.
It was a cigarette.