 It is a cold January evening, and some 80,000 people have just watched a nail-biting football match. The nearly 88 minutes not much has happened, until an exciting goal, then an equalising goal in the last few minutes of play. The game is an old firm fixture, where Glasgow's two biggest teams face off. As such, it's always well attended, and rivalries between the two groups, or fans runs high. After the game, thousands look to make their way home. Some walk, others catch a bus, but a popular way home is via the Glasgow subway. To get to Copeland Road Station, football fans need to negotiate stairway 13. As the crowd is funneled down the stairway, a crush begins. Many are shuffled along by the way to the bodies. This is a common occurrence, but in the push someone loses their footing, then another and another. This triggers a chain reaction, as more and more people join the top of the stairway. An avalanche of bodies tumbled down the stairs. Many were tracked and couldn't move. When all is finished, 66 lives would be lost. Welcome to Plainly Difficult, my name is John, and today we're looking at the 1971 Ibrox disaster. Background Today our story starts in Glasgow, Scotland, but more specifically the suburb of Ibrox, located south of River Clyde, which is around here on a map. The suburb's name is derived from Scottish Gaelic, which roughly means Badger Den. Glasgow's history and by extension Ibrox's goes way back to before the 6th century, but we will fast forward to the 1800s for today's video at least. The Rangers football team in the late 1800s was ever increasingly in need of a permanent purpose built home. This resulted in the first Ibrox park completed in 1887, but it proved over the following 10 years to be nothing but a headache for a club. It was not the right size for the games the club wanted to host, and as such a new ground was planned. This would be the current day stadium site. Opened in 1899, it boasted the capacity of pretty much as many people as you can squeeze inside. This would lead to the first of the park's major disasters. It was three years after opening in 1902, where a wooden terrace would collapse killing 25. But we won't dwell on this too much as it's likely to be covered in another future video. However, this disaster resulted in the removal of the wooden terraces on the site of the east and west stands. These were later replaced by earthen mounds. By 1910, the capacity was officially at 63,000, and Scotland had found itself the home for three of the world's largest football grounds at the time. The park would continue to see redesigns and developments over its lifetime. The banking of the terraces increased. Now to get out of these terraces staircases were provided. These were steep and ran down the back of the terrace. You can see the western one here in this picture. There was also an eastern one around about here, which was called Stairway 13, but we will come back to this in a bit. Now in 1939, the stadium would see a pretty big crowd of nearly 130,000 people, one the largest in British history in a football stadium. Post-war, the stadium would receive flood lighting and coverings for the north and east terraces, which leads us to the 1960s. Stairway 13. The 1960s would be a deadly time for the park. The stadium had issues with herding fans off the site safely. You see Copeland Road subway station was right near the corner of the east stand. As such, it was a popular method of leaving the area post-match. The subway was pretty handy, running in a circle line throughout the city. You could in theory jump on any train regardless of the direction and eventually reach your destination. The subway also only had 15 stations after all. As such, heading for Copeland Road was a pretty popular way to get home. Because of this, the nearest exit to the station was number 13, and its associated stairway, which gained a name quite understandably, Stairway 13. After the final whistle blew, crowds would pour down the long and steep sets of stairs to exit 13. Lead us to say, this can be a recipe for disaster. If you've ever been in a big enough crowd before, it doesn't take much to get separated from the group, or even get pushed in the wrong direction. In 1963, concerns were raised over a number of incidents of overcrowding on Stairway 13. This was sparked off when, on the 16th of September 1961, two people were killed in a crush. The club installed safety measures, but two more crushes in 1967 and 1969 injured 8 and 26 people respectively. However, the club hadn't consulted any professional firms as to what safety precautions should have been taken. But this would just be the prelude to one of the worst accidents in British football history in the early 1970s. The Disaster It is the afternoon of the 2nd of January 1971, and some 80,000 people have piled into Ibrox Park to watch a favourite New Year's tradition, an old firm match. The range as the Celtic game kicks off, and for the most part, on this bitterly cold day with thick freezing fog, is rather uneventful. However, at the last minute, Celtic winger Jimmy Johnstone scored a seemingly winning goal. Looking like the match was lost, Rangers fans started to leave Ibrox. Many hoped to quickly get on the subway before the rest of the crowds piled out after the final whistle blow. But just seconds later in injury time, Rangers player Colin Stein scored equalising the game. With the final whistle now blown, the numbers leaving the stadium would increase significantly. From the East Stand, Stairway 13 was the obvious choice of egress, as hundreds crowded the stairway the usual crush developed. A couple of spectators lost their footing on the steps. Many fell, but numbers joining the staircase continued. This caused a cascade effect of more and more people falling over. One would later say, as we went down the stairs, what was apparent was that as we went down, our angle slowly progressed towards the horizontal, and I was quickly aware that we were falling. People who had fallen over on the lower stairs had more people fall on top of them, creating a crush several people deep. More and more people unaware of the crush below made their way onto the top of the stairway, adding to the weight of those who had lost their footing. As the weight mounted up on the fallen bodies, those underneath could not breathe. This created a condition called compressive asphyxia. This is a mechanical condition where expansion of the lungs is prevented by compressing the torso. This in turn restricts breathing, and thus causes death. Within just a few minutes, the pile of human bodies was up to six feet deep in some places. The victims couldn't escape due to the weight. Shouts came out from the crowd to stop pushing, but the flow of people was like an unstoppable wave. Eventually the flow was stemmed, and as people at the top of the crowd managed to free themselves, more and more of the trapped were also freed. Due to the crush, many of the injuries were related to restricted blood flow, internal bleeding and severe bruising from the sheer weight placed on their bodies. However, these would be considered the lucky ones. After some 45 minutes, the cries for help had been dulled. You see, because of the compressive nature of the disaster, some victims had been made unconscious, and many others had little air to shout out. Eventually, first responders, including ambulance workers and the police, managed to free some of the more trapped victims, taking them and laying them out on the pitch for medical care. Several lives were saved that evening on the picture eyebrows. But for 66, this would not be the case. All of the victims were under the age of 50. Half were under the age of 20. In addition to the deaths, there were over 200 injured. The disaster was over with, just a few hours after it had begun. But it had raised the question, how could this have happened? Just a few weeks after the disaster, starting on the 15th of February 1971, a fatal accident inquiry was held to investigate and officially determine the circumstances of the 66 deaths. The inquiry found some pretty worrying things about safety at Ibrox Park. The inquiry found that there was a grossly excessive crowd pressure present that lifted many victims off their feet, not allowing them the chance to select which of the seven lanes on the stairway to take. It was found that all on the stairway were travelling in the same direction, which stopped rumours of the crush being caused by fans going back into the stadium after the first goal. I also found that the regulation of crowds fell squarely at the feet of Rangers FC, due to Ibrox Park being private property. It was also found that the club's directors had not considered the safety of the park's stairways, which is pretty worrying due to the number of fatal and near fatal crushes on the site during the 1960s. Although damning of the club, the inquiry praised the first responders and the police, who acted as quickly as possible to try and rescue many of the injured. Another inquiry by Lord Wheatley was set to explore the ways to improve safety across the industry, more deeply than the fatal accident inquiry could have done in its seven days of hearing evidence. Wheatley were published as findings on the 3rd of May 1972, which would lead to legislation in the form of the Safety of Sports Grounds Act of 1975, which designated any sports ground with accommodation for more than 10,000 spectators, or more than 5,000 spectators for grounds hosting Premier League and English Football League matches, as requiring a safety certificate to admit spectators. A civil damages trial was raised at Glasgow Sheriff's Court in May 1974 by the widow of one of the Ibrox victims. The ruling, like the fatal accident inquiry, was damning for the football club, saying the accident was due to the fault and negligence of the defenders, Rangers FC. The site was extensively remodeled in the 1970s to encompass an all-seating capacity of 44,000, which would eventually be increased to 50,000. You see, reducing the number of occupants and making the site all-seating drastically helps with crowd management. But although the improvements were enacted, it would prove not to be the end of football match disasters in the UK. But this will probably be a story for another video. This is the Plain Difficult Production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed. Plain Difficult Videos are produced by me, John, in the currently windy corner of southern London, UK. I'd like to thank my Patreons and my YouTube members for your financial support, as well as all of you viewers for tuning in every week. If you want to see random photographs, I have Instagram and I also have Twitter, which is where I normally put up my hints for future videos. If you like this outro song that's playing right now, then feel free to go over to my second channel made by John, where you can watch the video in full. And all that's left to say, is MrMusic, play us out please.