I missed the fire by about an hour. I’d travelled to London from Leeds with a colleague and we had intended to have a quick pint before getting the train back. He felt unwell during the day so we returned early, luckily as it happened. As said elsewhere, in 1987, in the days before ubiquitous mobile phones, my wife had no way of contacting me to find out whether I was caught up in the big news story of the day (31 people died). Later on, I became professionally interested in risk management, reading classics such as Normal Accidents [0]. I also tracked down the Fennel report [pdf, 1] written during the inquest. I used the fire as a case study at work to raise awareness of the dangers of the normalisation of deviance.

The London underground turned out to have been a fire disaster waiting to happen. To quote Fennel:

“London Underground did not guard against the unpredictability of fire. Since no one had been killed in the earlier fires they genuinely believed that with passengers and staff acting as fire detectors there would be sufficient time to evacuate passengers safely. But they had no system to train staff in fire drill or evacuation and their attitude towards fire (which they insisted should be called 'smouldering' and regarded as an occupational hazard) gave the staff a false sense of security. They failed to appreciate the particular problems of smoke.”

Fennel reports that there were a staggering 400 fires and ‘smoulders’ between 1958 and 1987.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_Accidents

[1] http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/DoT_KX1987.pdf

I remember this. My grandmother was caught up in it coming back from holiday. Back then there were no mobile phones and she couldn’t hear her land line phone so everyone was panicking and we had to go to her house to see if she was ok. She was making some tea when we got there and shrugged it off as a minor disruption to her schedule. A lot has changed technology-wise since then.

For the people who don’t know, you could smoke on London Underground back then and the place was littered with cigarette butts still burning in some cases. It was just a matter of time.

Model showing the Trench Effect (as discovered in the Kings Cross Fire investigation)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSmeg-vn6ho

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_effect

>The trench effect occurs when a fire burns beside a steeply inclined surface. The flames lie down along the surface, demonstrating the Coandă effect. The flames heat the material farther up: these emit gases that autoignite in a flashover event. The flames from these areas are themselves subject to the Coandă effect and blow a jet of flame up to the end of the inclined surface. This jet continues until the fuel depletes.

For all of us living in London in 1987, I think the Kings Cross fire is the first thing that comes to mind if you mention wooden escalators. We just took for granted that the underground was safe; I used to really like the old wooden escalators. The fire was a terrible shock and wake-up call to everyone.

IIRC, the top floors of the Manhattan flagship Macy’s had a few wooden flights: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/nyregion/macys-histori...

We still allow wooden escalators but only above ground. There's one at Greenford.

They were used in the Tyne pedestrian tunnel until pretty recently.

They’re actually still there but the tunnel is closed for refurbishment, part of which is the replacement of the escalators.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyne_Tunnel#Tyne_cyclist_and_p...

IIRC the root cause was a 50 year build-up of grease, rat fur, ticket stubs, cigarette butts, and matches in the tracks that the steps rolled on. They had never been cleaned. One day a smoker dropped a match in just the right spot...

Brings to mind a great song by Nick Lowe:

https://genius.com/Nick-lowe-who-was-that-man-lyrics

Can't find a video on youtube...

Video on the forensics investigation:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6cE9Ud6GgE4

Yeah that was my thought as well. Cool history, but quite the fire hazard.

I suppose that they could be fitted with fire detection and suppression systems, and operated safely.