Analysis of Disaster Management of the Hillsborough Stadium Disaster

Analysis of Disaster Management of the Hillsborough Stadium Disaster
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Institution
Introduction
Social places and social events are always big attractions for huge crowds. In the modern society, the convergence of large crowds at social events and other public institutions is a common phenomenon. Some public meeting points, such as the Pennsylvania Station and New York Grand Central Terminal in the United States accommodate over 200, 000 commuters daily. Similarly, famous buildings such as the New York World Trade Center office was reported to accommodate around 50, 000 workers, while it received 80, 000 visitors each weekday (Weidinger, 2010). However, nowhere is this scenario more common than in sports, where up to 60-70, 000 people throng into stadiums to watch live matches. This is because the concentration of people in sporting events is high as more spectators are packed into a limited space within stadiums. Because of the high concentration of people at sporting events, it is easy for disastrous events such as stampedes to occur. Nevertheless, there have been tragic stampedes in religious, political, and musical events over the last 30 years, which suggest that any large crowd can potentially end tragically in the absence of proper crowd management (Weidinger, 2010). Crowd size is one of the major factors that determine the likelihood of a stampede or panic to occur. Other factors include the level of organization of the event, and the nature of the crowd, such as whether it was a spontaneous crowd (such as protest crowds) or it is planned. In this regard, avoiding disasters in large crowds involves anticipating the movement of people in panic situations, an understanding of what causes people to panic (e.g. lack of personal space in overcrowded places) and how people react in a panic situation.
Description of a Disaster Event: The Hillsborough Stadium Disaster (15 April, 1989)
The Hillsborough Stadium disaster in Sheffield, England, occurred during a match between Liverpool FC and Nottingham Forest FC in an FA Cup semi-final (Eason, 2009). When the gates to the stadium were opened, Liverpool fans were allowed to continue streaming into their allotted sections of the stadium, which were already overcrowded. The crowing inside the stadium resulted in people overcrowding at the entrance, prompting the senior police officer in charge to order for the opening of an exit gate with the intention of easing the pressure at the entrance (Gibson & Conn, 2012). The exit gate led directly to a standing tunnel, which in turn led to the already overcrowded sections designated for the Liverpool fans. In past occasions, the tunnel was usually sealed off once the seating enclosures were full. On this fateful occasion, however, the tunnel remained open and unattended. Because of the absence of officials to direct and regulate the movement of people into the stadium, those getting in continued to push those inside toward the fence railings that were intended to control fan violence by barring fans from getting onto the pitch. More and more fans kept pushing from the rear, unaware that there was a serious problem at the front since those at the front were being pushed up against the fence. As a result, 96 people from suffocation and more than 700 injured. By the time the match officials realized that there was something wrong, it was too late.
The Hillsborough Stadium disaster was not the first one in the history of soccer. In May 29, 1985, 39 people died and 600 others injured at the Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium, after stampede broke out during a match between Italy’s Juventus FC and England’s Liverpool. Fans trying to escape from the stadium were trapped against a wall (Weidinger, 2010). The incidence was caused by the spilling of Liverpool fans into the neutral space that separated then from Juventus fans, and in the ensuing rush to escape from this high-risk area, the fleeing fans crushed into those seated near a wall. The wall subsequently collapsed, trapping and injuring more people. In the same year, on May 11, 56 people died after fire destroyed Bradford City Stadium during a match between Bradford City FC and Lincoln City FC. The fire broke out as the home fans were celebrating after winning the Division Three Championship title. Following an inquiry into the incident, smoking and wooden grandstands were banned in football matches.
In this light, the Hillsborough stadium disaster barely 4 years later could not be termed as a rare event in sports. If there were any lessons to be learned from history, there were past similar situations that demonstrated the different ways in which things can go wrong in events that attract big crowds. The only unique aspect of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster is that it was the most tragic stadium event in the history of British sports, and the severity of the event prompted the passing of various safety regulations to prevent similar future disasters.
Management of the Hillsborough Stadium Disaster
Prevention, Preparedness, Response and Recovery
Attending soccer matches is a weekly social event in Britain. Given the regularity of soccer matches, and in light of previous tragic events that had taken place in stadiums, the UK government and Football Association had implemented some measures to boost the safety of fans. All these measures encompassed the prevention and preparedness components of disaster management. Wooden structures were common in stadiums prior to the Bradford City Stadium disaster, and their use was attributed to the fire outbreak (Harris, 2014). Following the disaster, wooden structures were banned because they were deemed not strong enough to hold large crowds, and posed a risk in case of fire. Similarly, huge metal fences were erected to prevent fans from spilling onto the pitch when violence broke out. As a crowd control measure, cages, or “pens,” were erected at the main terraces to separate sections of fans. However, the Hillsborough disaster was another wake up call as it became apparent that crowds presented more complex problems than had been anticipated. This led to the implementation of further measures aimed at anticipating, preventing and responding quickly in case of disaster events.
Prevention
Prevention is an important disaster management as it helps in avoiding potential disasters (Coppola, 2010). Prevention enables communities and authorities to mitigate the destructive consequences of disruptive events, particularly man-made disasters such as crowd violence.
To prevent the recurrence of overcrowding in stadiums, England’s Football Association banned standing in stadium following the Hillsborough disaster. This is because standing allows more people to get packed into the stadium, while the up-and-down jumping of fans creates more pressure to the supporting frames. By law, every stadium in the English Premier League must allocate a seat to every attending fan (The Football Supporters’ Federetaion, 2014). The seating requirement helped to address a key issue that was overlooked when implementation of metal fences in stadiums. The metal fences were invented to curb the violence and hooliganism that disrupted matches in the 70s and 80s. However, the metal fences and walls that were intended to prevent fans from invading playing grounds became deathly traps as the suffocation of 96 people in the Hillsborough Stadium demonstrated. The seating requirement helped to reduce the number of people who can get into stadiums, thereby helping avoid overcrowding and the risk of getting trapped.
The use of tickets is another key crowd control measure that the Football Association has taken to avoid overcrowding in stadiums (Wright, 2014). Football clubs in the Premier League are required to only issue tickets in accordance to the seating capacity of their stadiums. This requirement ensures that the number of fans who attend matches do not exceed what the stadiums can accommodate comfortably. Before Hillsborough, stadiums were often filled beyond their holding capacity, which increased chances of stampedes. There are tales when a fan’s feet never touched the ground because of overcrowding in enclosed pens (Wright, 2014). Such situations not only prevented the authorities from monitoring incidents in the stadiums, but also made response difficult due to the inability to reach into overcrowded sections.
As noted before, other stadium disasters had occurred in England prior to the Hillsborough incident. However, the preventive measures taken by the Football Association, such as the erecting of metal fences, were not sufficient to ensure fans complete safety (Gibson & Conn, 2012). One area of failure was lack of foresight on how the perimeter fences would be an obstacle incase of emergency situations that required people to get out of the stadium as quickly as possible. While the barriers and perimeter fences helped in containing fan violence inside the stadiums, they prevented any forward or sideway movements to escape. The victims of the Hillsborough disaster died because the metal fences prevented them from escaping to the pitch as they were being pushed from the rear.
In an interview with the Daily Maily, Steve Staunton, a former Liverpool defender who was 20 years old at the time, described a horrifying scene of children being pushed against the fence with no way of escaping. He stated:
I don’t want to be too graphic but I could see youngsters, children, being pressed against the barriers so hard they were changing color,” Staunton said. “There was blood on the pitch and people screaming. There were supporters trying to throw other supporters over the fence to save them but some were being caught on the spikes (Wright, 2014).
This revelation shows that one of the biggest failures of the Football Association was ensuring that there were quick exit routes to avoid fans b...