London's Deadly Wooden Escalator Fire at Kings Cross

In the first half of the 20th century, escalators and escalator components were commonly made of wood. Some stores, such as the famous Macy's Herald Square in New York City, still feature wooden escalators or have preserved their wooden escalators to show respect for their historical significance. However, wooden escalators can pose a safety hazard because they are apt to catch fire more easily than their metal counterparts. The flammable materials in wooden escalators can lead to tragedy, as an escalator fire in Kings Cross did in 1987.

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 new Brittish Fire Precautions Regulations 1989. 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.

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