King's Cross fire
1987 CE.
Shown on the map at 51.531°, -0.124°.
The King's Cross fire occurred in 1987 at King's Cross St Pancras tube station in London, England, causing 31 fatalities. It began under a wooden escalator before spreading into the ticket hall in a flashover. The fire began at approximately 19:30 on 18 November 1987, at a major interchange on the London Underground. As well as the mainline railway stations above ground and subsurface platforms for the Metropolitan, Circle and Hammersmith & City lines, there were platforms deeper underground for the Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines. A public inquiry was conducted from February to June 1988. Investigators reproduced the fire twice, once to determine whether grease under the escalator was ignitable, and again to determine whether a computer simulation of the fire—which indicated the cause of the flashover—was accurate. The inquiry determined that the fire had been started by a lit match being dropped onto the escalator. The fire seemed minor until it suddenly increased in intensity and shot a violent and prolonged tongue of fire, and billowing smoke, up into the ticket hall.
Text from the Wikipedia article King's Cross fire, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.