daniellaronstrom

In 18th november 1987 there was a huge fire in the underground station called King's Cross St Pancras. It erupted from one of the escalators. The one with traffic from the Piccadilly line. This one:

At first there was only a small fire for a long time so the firebrigade thought it was under controll. But later it became a huge fire in only seconds.

Imaging a fire start when there is more people the this in the escalator because it was rush hour, this picture is taken just before rush hour.

When it started the people who worked on the station closed these escalators. But the trains still stopped at the station and people still got on and of the trains.

In just seconds what was a small controlled fire erupted to a big one.
The firemen were chocked they had never seen anything like it.
And it all happend because of the trench effect. Which as a aftermath to this fire was found out.

The trench effect shows that at first it's a small fire but the heat of the fire goes upwards and because of the 30° angle of the escalator it's heating up to a level when it can't be more heated and a huge fire erupts. But this heat couldn't be seen which tricked the firemen in to a false thinking that the fire was under controll.

And the hall in which it erupted in to might have looked like this.

Because in this station there are two places were the escalators go up from the one who got on fire is this one.

and the one where people still got down and up from is this one.


And this station is one of the bigger ones in London with three lines stopping here and the railway trains too.
This fire ended 31 peoples life and the aftermath they got out of it in the end wasn't that it was the work of terrorists or anything likewise. The conclusion they got at last was that it was because some passenger had lighted a cigarette in the escalator and thrown the match down without turning it out.
And it could happend because of the dirt in the escalator and because it was partly of wood.

I think this is a really interresting conclusion after all..:D

Hope you enjoyed reading..