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The Hillsborough football disaster: Stress analysis and design codes for crush barriers

✍ Scribed by R.A. Smith


Book ID
103996538
Publisher
Elsevier Science
Year
1994
Tongue
English
Weight
742 KB
Volume
1
Category
Article
ISSN
1350-6307

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✦ Synopsis


Hiilsborough has entered our language in a similar way to, for example, Zeebrugge, Kings Cross and Kegworth. All these disasters were due to a combination of simple failures to apply common sense safety rules. This paper describes some technical aspects of the Hillsborough stadium football disaster of April 1989 in which 96 people were killed by crushing. Attention is focused on gross overcrowding in 'closed-box' sections of the ground: overcrowding which eventually led to the collapse of a crush barrier. A detailed analysis of the failure of this barrier is presented. The rules for testing and design of such barriers are discussed. Events subsequent to the disaster suggest that, yet again, hard learned lessons are in danger of being forgotten.