At 19:30 on 18 November 1987 firefighters were called to a fire at Kings Cross tube station in the UK. It took 150 firemen 5 hours to combat the fire, which claimed 31 lives.
Fatalities
- Betty Afua Agyapong – student
- Terence Alonzo Best – local authority employee
- Mark David Bryant – cold store supervisor
- Andy Burdett – office worker
- Elizabeth Norma Byers – schoolteacher
- Treena Chappell – bank employee
- Dean T. Cottle – schoolboy (aged 7)
- Susheila Nirmala Cottle – housewife
- Sarah Dearden – financial journalist
- Neville Harold Eve – office worker
- Jane Alison Fairey – stockbroker
- Natalie Angela Falco – widow
- Alexander Fallon – unidentified until 2004
- Jonathan Redvers George – engineer
- Kuttalam Govindarajan – manager, bureau de change
- Graham David Hall – company director
- Michael Holden – local authority employee
- Ralph Humberstone – temporary worker
- Bernadette Frances Kearney – auxiliary nurse
- Michael Anthony Keegan – materials controller
- Mohammed Shoaib Khan – student
- Marco Liberati – student
- Philip Geoffrey Marks – architect
- Laurence Vincent Moran – musician
- Lawrence Sonny Newcombe – staff nurse
- Stephen Alan Parsons – installations manager
- Christopher W. Roome – stockbroker
- Rai Mohabib Singh – assistant manager
- John Fitzgerald Joseph St Prix – self-employed painter and decorator
- Ivan Tarassenko – musician
- Colin James Townsley – London Fire Brigade station officer
The fire led to drastic changes in the layout of train stations an improvements in technology that is used to monitor crowd control.
It is believed the fire was started by a cigarette / match falling between the gap in an escalator not a wooden rail. It’s interesting to note that the escallators which effectively pumped air upwards acted (due to piston effect of trains arriving and leaving) resulted in flames at the top that were several thousand degrees c.
The smoke was also a major contributor to the fire causing confusion and suffocation. I wonder if the person that tossed the match realizes how many people he/she killed. I mention it because simple silly things can so easily get screwed up and become deadly fast. I mention it because there were 2 black guys sat on the train station smoking tonight.
For more info on the disaster look here.
