King’s Cross 1987: disaster sparked by a match
RSSB’s Tom Waghorn revisits the 1987 King’s Cross Underground fire, revealing change the event brought to the industry.
On 18 November 1987, 73-year-old Alexander Fallon of Falkirk stepped into King’s Cross Underground station ticket hall. Simultaneously, a commuter stepped off a Piccadilly Line train and took an escalator upwards. As the commuter neared the exit, they lit a cigarette, shook out the match, and flicked it away. They headed home, not knowing that they had just started a catastrophic chain of events.
Then, as now, tens of thousands of passengers used King’s Cross station each day. Then, as now, escalators took passengers to the concourse from the deep underground platforms. But, back then, those escalators made of wood.
On this particular day in 1987, several passengers coming up from the Piccadilly Line noticed the smell of smoke and a smouldering fire visible through the gaps between and beside the escalator treads. They told staff. It wasn’t long before staff, and British Transport Police officers, began to respond. They shut down the escalator, called the fire brigade, and redirected passengers.
Many wooden escalators used on the Underground had been fitted with water fogging systems to reduce the risk of escalator fires. These systems could spray a haze of water droplets over the whole assembly, including the machinery underneath.
When installed, they had been used daily as a precaution against small smouldering fires. This drastically cut the risk of a fire spreading but also shortened the lifespan of almost every component of the escalators. After some time, the system fell out of daily use and was only to be used in emergencies.
The escalators at King’s Cross had the fogging system fitted, but it had been so long since staff had used it that it didn’t occur to them to do so. Many of the newer members of staff hadn’t even been shown how to. So they tried to fight the fire with handheld carbon dioxide extinguishers but couldn’t get near enough to quell the flames.
Despite the best efforts of police, staff, and firefighters, the fire slowly spread. But it seemed as though the situation would soon be under control. The ticket hall was emptying steadily and there was only a light haze of smoke in the air.
Moments later, everything changed. The small fire flashed over. A fireball shot up the escalator and exploded into the ticket hall. The fireman in charge ordered his personnel and the remaining members of the public in the ticket hall to run for their lives.
Those in the ticket hall, though blinded by smoke, did have immediate access to an exit, but there were also still staff, firefighters, and hundreds of passengers on the lower platforms. A fiercely blazing fire was now between them and open air.
Just minutes before, drivers had been told not to stop at King’s Cross. Now, however, drivers obeying this instruction were flagged down by their desperate colleagues on the northbound Victoria Line platform. Three trains, one after the other, stopped and took on passengers, evacuating nearly 200 who had no other way out of the burning station.
Ambulances queued outside the station to ferry more than 100 injured people to hospital, while more than 30 fire engines attended to contribute to the effort to control the flames.
Thirty-one people had been killed either by flames or by smoke inhalation. Thirty had been accounted for, but one could not be identified. They were simply known as ‘Body 115’. It was only in 2004 that Alexander Fallon was formally named, thanks to advancements in forensics.
Alexander had moved to London in 1974 after his wife passed away only to find himself amid a nightmare the evening he went to King’s Cross.
A scientific inquiry by the Health and Safety Executive examined the behaviour of the fire, seeking to understand why it had worsened so dramatically at the point of flashover. The investigation found a known phenomenon had been worsened by a previously undocumented effect known as the ‘trench effect’.
Flammable gasses tend to adhere to surfaces. When this happens on an incline, the perfect conditions are created for the flame to race up the surface in a sudden jet when flashover takes
place. This effect is worsened when the flammable gasses are effectively contained within a trench, as they were by the escalator in the case of King’s Cross.
Meanwhile, government investigators considered the response to the fire and how the initial response might have been handled differently. Station staff, police, firefighters, and passengers were interviewed and a detailed timeline of the fire was assembled.
Small fires on the wooden escalators of the London Underground were a found to be a regular occurrence. Staff had been told to try and tackle small fires without alerting the fire brigade. In reports made by London Underground staff, it had become normal to refer to very small escalator fires as ‘smouldering’ to avoid using the word fire.
Meanwhile, training for dealing with fires was poor. Most staff had not used the water fogging system installed on the escalator or seen it used by their colleagues. There was no cohesive plan
for evacuating the entire station, and many staff, including ticket sellers and cleaners, were not instructed on what to do in the event of an emergency.
Additionally, many wooden escalators across the network were poorly maintained. Grease and dirt were frequently allowed to build up in the machinery, creating the perfect fuel for a fire. When other wooden escalators were examined, multiple burn marks were found, indicating that fires had begun, smouldered, and burned themselves out repeatedly in the past.
In the years after the fire, the long-existent smoking ban was more readily enforced, clear signage was added to the Underground network, staff were retrained, and wooden escalators were slowly removed and replaced with more durable metal ones. Today, a rebuilt King’s Cross is still a crucial transit hub and remains as busy as ever. In the ticket hall is a plaque that bears the names of those who died in the disaster and a memorial clock donated and maintained to this day by the staff of the London Underground.
Image credits: Christopher Newberry, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons; Edwardx, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
