Post by Ben on Nov 18, 2012 17:06:12 GMT
Today is the 25th anniversary of the Kings Cross fire, which started at roughly 7:30 pm on the Piccadilly line escalators.
The fire resulted in the loss of 31 lives, making it the second most deadly postwar accident to occur on the system after the Moorgate tube crash of 1975.
The subsequent inquiry into the events, the Fennel Report, found that the fire had started most likely because a lit match had fallen to the side of the escalator treads, landing underneath on its running track, surrounded by debris and grease. The fire grew slowly for fifeteen minutes in the presense of both station staff and members of the London Fire Brigade before flashing over. The intense blaze filled the ticket hall with think black smoke and heat, seriously injuring or killing most of the people within.
Its repercussions were massive, leading to the wholescale replacement of flammable and noxious-smoke emitting materials on the Underground, the resignation of senior management of both London Underground and London Regional Transport, the vigourous enforcement of a pre-existing ban on smoking extending to all stations, the wholesale change of staff fire safety training and procedures, and the discovery of the 'trench effect', based on previously seperate fields of fluid dynamics and fire dynamics.
Ultimately it forced the hand of a previously uninterested Conservative government to increase funding and investment in the tube, starting a reversal of decades of chronic underinvestment.
The Fennel Report can be read here: www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_KX1987.pdf
Some contemporary news reports can be seen here: newsfilm.bufvc.ac.uk/article.php?story=2005100819530378
news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/18/newsid_2519000/2519675.stm
And a documentary on it here
A tragic day indeed.
The fire resulted in the loss of 31 lives, making it the second most deadly postwar accident to occur on the system after the Moorgate tube crash of 1975.
The subsequent inquiry into the events, the Fennel Report, found that the fire had started most likely because a lit match had fallen to the side of the escalator treads, landing underneath on its running track, surrounded by debris and grease. The fire grew slowly for fifeteen minutes in the presense of both station staff and members of the London Fire Brigade before flashing over. The intense blaze filled the ticket hall with think black smoke and heat, seriously injuring or killing most of the people within.
Its repercussions were massive, leading to the wholescale replacement of flammable and noxious-smoke emitting materials on the Underground, the resignation of senior management of both London Underground and London Regional Transport, the vigourous enforcement of a pre-existing ban on smoking extending to all stations, the wholesale change of staff fire safety training and procedures, and the discovery of the 'trench effect', based on previously seperate fields of fluid dynamics and fire dynamics.
Ultimately it forced the hand of a previously uninterested Conservative government to increase funding and investment in the tube, starting a reversal of decades of chronic underinvestment.
The Fennel Report can be read here: www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_KX1987.pdf
Some contemporary news reports can be seen here: newsfilm.bufvc.ac.uk/article.php?story=2005100819530378
news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/18/newsid_2519000/2519675.stm
And a documentary on it here
A tragic day indeed.
