A fire erupts in the Kings Cross Underground Station. 31 people are killed and dozens are injured. TMBA created this accident recreation based on the investigation report from the London Fire Brigade for the series "Extreme Evidence" (Court TV).
How the Fire Spread Up the Escalator
The lack of visible flames and relatively clean wood smoke produced lulled the emergency services into a false sense of security, especially as firemen had attended more than 400 similar tube fires over the previous three decades. Firemen later described the fire as around the size and intensity of a campfire. 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.
The fire started beneath the escalator, spread above it, then flashed over and filled the ticket hall with flames and smoke. Investigations later showed that a particular combination of draughts, caused by an eastbound train arriving at the station while a westbound train was leaving, created a 12 mph wind through the station and up the escalator (known as the piston effect; this helps ventilate the tube), adding to the speed of the fire spreading. This wind was however found to be not enough to account for the flash over or the fire ferocity, which was described as similar to a blowtorch.
TMBA provided these accident recreations based on the investigation report from the London Fire Brigade for the series "Extreme Evidence" (Court TV).
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