Kings Cross fire

The Kings Cross fire was a devastating underground fire in London on November 18, 1987 which killed thirty-one people. It burnt out the top level (entrances and ticket halls) of King's Cross St. Pancras London Underground station, a huge interchange station which has platforms on the Victoria, Piccadilly, Northern, Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines.

The fire was caused by rubbish and grease beneath wooden escalators being ignited, probably by a discarded match. Although smoking was banned on the London Underground in February 1985 (a consequence of the Oxford Circus fire), smokers often lit up on their way out of the system. The fire started under the escalator, spread above it, then flashed over and filled the ticket hall with flames and smoke. The subsequent forensic investigation found charred wood beneath the adjacent up escalator, which indicated that a number of fires had started previously due to the same cause but had not taken hold; instead they extinguished of their own accord.

The large number of casualties in the fire was an indirect consequence of a combustion phenomenon known as the trench effect. This effect meant that in the early stages of the fire the flames lay down in the escalator rather than burning vertically, so that they heated the steps higher up. In these early stages of the fire, the flames visible to anyone not standing on the burning escalator were a small part of the full story. The majority of the flames were lying down in the escalator trench; only a few protruded above the balustrade and were visible to observers. The lack of visible flames and relatively clean woodsmoke produced lulled the emergency services into a false sense of security. Many people in the ticket hall believed that the fire was small and thus not an immediate hazard: indeed, an evacuation route from the tunnels below was arranged through a parallel escalator tunnel to the ticket hall above the burning escalator.

However, once a large enough number of steps had been heated, a flashover occurred on the escalator. When the treads of the escalator flashed over, the size of the fire increased exponentially and a sustained jet of flame was discharged from the escalator tunnel into the ticket hall, setting combustibles in the hall alight. The nature of the smoke changed from clean and thin to black and oily. The 31 casualties were those unable to escape from the ticket hall before succumbing to the effects of the latter type of smoke and the intense heat.

The Fennell Investigation into the fire prompted the introduction of the Fire Precautions (Sub-surface Railway Stations) Regulations 1989 (usually referred to as the Section 12 Regulations because they were introduced under section 12 of the 1971 Fire Precautions Act). These led to: the replacement of all wooden escalators on the Underground; the mandatory installation of automatic sprinklers and heat detectors in escalators; mandatory fire safety training for all station staff twice a year; and improvements in emergency services liaison.

One of the 31 victims of the fire remained unidentified until January 2004, when forensic evidence proved that he was 72-year-old Alexander Fallon of Falkirk, Scotland.

See also

• Kings Cross railway station

References

• D. Fennell, Investigation into the King's Cross Underground Fire. The Stationery Office Books; ISBN 0101049927
• B. Appleton Report of an inquiry into health and safety aspects of stoppages caused by fire and bomb alerts on London Underground, British Rail and other mass transit systems. HSE Books 1992; ISBN 0118863940
• K. Moodie, The King's Cross Fire: Damage Assessment and Overview of the Technical Investigation Fire Safety Journal, vol 18 (1992) 13-33
• S. Simcox, N.S. Wilkes & I.P. Jones, Computer Simulation of the Flows of Hot Gases from the Fire at King's Cross Underground Station Fire Safety Journal, vol 18 (1992) 49-73
• K. Moodie & S.F. Jagger, Results and analysis from the scale model tests Paper presented at I Mech E seminar, The King's Cross Underground Fire: fire dynamics and the organisation of safety 1 June 1989; ISBN 0852987056
• A.F. Roberts, The King's Cross Fire: a correlation of the eyewitness accounts and results of the scientific investigation Paper presented at I Mech E seminar,The King's Cross Underground Fire: fire dynamics and the organisation of safety 1 June 1989; ISBN 0852987056

External links

• Summary of the emergency services response (http://www.sos.se/sos/publ/refereng/9003030e.htm)
• Fire Precautions (Sub-surface Railway Stations) Regulations 1989 (http://www.hmso.gov.uk/si/si1989/Uksi_19891401_en_1.htm)
• Last Kings Cross victim identified (http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/content/pressreleases/0401/22.asp)pl:Pożar na stacji metra Kings Cross w Londynie, 18 listopada 1987