Erin Brady|
On the 15th of April 1989 a tragic incident took place at Hillsborough Stadium at a football match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, which sadly ended with 96 Liverpool fans being crushed to death and 766 others being injured.
On that day the match was sold out and 53,000 excited fans headed to the game that would start at 3 o’clock, oblivious to what was actually going to happen.
The Liverpool supporters were the bigger fan club, however they were allocated the smaller side of the stadium so that there wouldn’t be any altercations with the Forest supporters.
At the time football crowds were known for causing trouble and segregation was strictly enforced.
By 14:50 pens 2 and 3 were completely full which were allocated just behind the goal post, but still outside the stadium thousands of more fans were still waiting to get inside.
At 14:52 Gate C was opened and 2,000 Liverpool fans went straight to a tunnel that lead directly to pens 3 and 4. That amount of people caused severe crushing in the pens.
The fans then began to climb over the fences to the less packed pens 1 and 5 to escape the human crush.
Later on it was estimated that 3,000 people were in the central pens- which was double the safety allowance.
At 3 o’clock the match began. Five minutes later the barrier on pen 3 gave way which caused people to fall over one another.
Liverpool fans continued to climb over the barriers and others were dragged up by fans on the upper levels.
At 15:06 the referee was ordered to stop the game. During the chaotic aftermath supporters tore up the advertisements to use as stretchers and were attempting to give other supporters first aid.
Once the authorities realised what was happening their response was slow and despite there being dozens of ambulances outside, access to the pitch was delayed as the police reported crowd trouble.
Sadly of the 96 people that died only 14 were admitted to hospital.
Only recently the families and victims of the Hillsborough disaster have received justice and this terrible incident has brought many families together and have helped each other through the tough times.
Hopefully in the future a disaster like that will never happen again and the 96 will never be forgotten and they will never walk alone.
