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Lord Justice Taylor did find that "there was insufficiently close co-operation
between the police and the emergency services", and further found that "it is
clear that SYMAS and the Fire Brigade should have been called earlier than
they were". But, in view of his finding as to the "pathetically short period for
which those unable to breathe could survive" he found that it is "improbable
that quicker recourse to the emergency services could have saved more lives".
Moreover, he rejected the criticism that, once they had been called, the St.
John Ambulance Brigade, the Fire Brigade and SYMAS (the South Yorkshire
Metropolitan Ambulance Service) had been slow to respond or inappropriate
in their response or that there was any insufficiency of equipment or lack of
triage. However, it is clear that he did not rule out the possibility that some
lives may have been saved by calling the emergency services in earlier and his
conclusion that in most cases the injuries would have been fatal in any event
after a very short period of crush asphyxia depended on a particular
pathological premise (namely that fatal crush injuries were due to a
continuing pressure which made death inevitable in a matter of minutes)
which has subsequently been challenged and is inconsistent with the fact that
some of the dead appeared to have revived briefly and many of the injured
who got medical attention promptly did survive (See BMJ article dated 30th
November 1991 and annexed hereto). As to his view that the emergency
services could not be validly criticised, this was based on a rejection of the
evidence of two doctors present at the ground with which a jury (had they
been allowed to hear their evidence at the inquest) might not have concurred.