FIREMEN who arrived at the Top Storey Club were faced with a terrible dilemma.

They couldn't reach the people trapped on the upper floor of the building because the fire had roared up the wooden stairs destroying this exit.

And, as they used the turntable ladders outside to try to form a bridge to reach clubgoers screaming from the club's lofty top windows, they found these were simply too short to reach them.

"The screams just gradually faded away," said ex-fireman Thomas Cornwell, of Green Lane, Bolton.

He was a 36-year-old fireman based at the old Marsden Road fire station on that night. His crew of five were already fighting a small fire at a local scrapyard when a message came over the newly-installed fire engine radio about the Top Storey fire.

His crew arrived at the club to join the many firemen already there about half an hour after the fire began.

"The building was full of smoke, more smoke than flames really by then, but it was still very warm. The staircase was completely gone and we had to put ladders up inside the building to get to the top floor."

There, the firefighters met a terrible sight.

"There were bodies all piled up near the bar. No-one inside that room who had not jumped had lived.

"The bodies weren't very burned, though. They were just quite pink -- almost like they'd been on their holidays.

"But they were piled up in two areas, one with about three bodies and another of about 12. They had panicked when they couldn't get out and were just piled together, like a pack of cards."

Mr Cornwell and fellow firemen then had the heartbreaking task of wrapping the bodies in tarpaulins and taking them down the ladders to the outside of the building.

"It really shook up some of the lads, it was such a terrible sight there. There were youngsters and middle-aged people. They never stood a chance."

"I don't think the ones who jumped knew just how high up they were," he added. "The building was built on two levels, and you wouldn't know by just going into the club and up the couple of flights of stairs that at the back you were around 80 feet up.

"I think that when they saw people jump and began to realise just how high it was, they stopped jumping. But they had nowhere else to hide."

The tragedy helped speed through the Fire Precautions Act, which had been held up in Parliament. In the national outcry following the Bolton fire, it was rushed through to create a new system of controls -- and to ensure that there was never a fire like the Top Storey Club again.