| King's Cross Fire |
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The fire was caused by rubbish and grease beneath wooden Escalator s 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 Service s 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 arrangement of underground hall and escalators functioned all too effectively as an report called Kings Cross underground station "an efficient furnace". 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 and Heat Detector s 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 22 January 2004 , when forensic evidence proved that he was 72-year-old Alexander Fallon of Falkirk , Scotland. The previously unidentified victim was immortalized in a 1990 Nick Lowe song, "Who Was That Man?" SEE ALSO REFERENCES
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