FAILURE OF THE PHYSICAL AND OPERATIONAL SAFETY SYSTEMS IN THE KING'S CROSS UNDERGROUND FIRE ASSOCIATED WITH HUMAN FACTORS

摘要

The King's Cross underground station is one of the busiest and most complex of the whole underground system. It services three deep tube lines -Piccadilly, Northern and Victoria - which have a common tube lines ticket hall (Figure 1). This is connected by a passage - the so-called Khyber Pass - to the Metropolitan and Circle lines, which have a separate ticket hall. The Kyber Pass is so named as, at some times of the day, a log jam is created by the excessive number of the travelling public. The platforms of the three tube lines are connected to the tube lines ticket hall by two sets of escalators -Piccadilly and Victoria. On the evening of the 18th November 1987, fortunately after the evening rush hour, a fire developed underneath one of the heavy duty Piccadilly line escalators (Figure 2). The rapid escalation of the fire led to the death of thirty-one people and to many injured, some grievously, and to severe damage to the station. Perhaps naturally the fire raised considerable concern amongst the travelling public and their political representatives. As a consequence the Secretary of State for the Department of Transport set up a formal investigation into the accident and 'its causes thereof and circumstances attending the same'. The paper is concerned with this investigation and in particular in relation to the contribution of human factors to the disaster.