London Subway Fire Kills 32, 80 Are Injured

At least 32 people were killed when fire raged through London’s busiest subway station Wednesday night, pouring choking smoke through a labyrinth of tunnels used daily by tens of thousands of commuters.

Police and firefighters said the death toll from the inferno at King’s Cross Station in central London is expected to rise.

The London Fire Brigade said 32 people, including one firefighter, are confirmed dead. Of 80 people reported injured, 27 are known to be hospitalized, many with severe burns.

The fire started about 7:30 p.m. local time beneath an old wooden escalator, due to be replaced, and was not extinguished until midnight.

The main evening rush hour was over, but hundreds of homeward-bound commuters were still streaming through the station, which links two main lines with five underground lines.

A passenger, Andrew Lea, said station workers directed some frightened commuters onto another escalator that wound up carrying them into the fire.

“We followed their directions . . . and about halfway up, a sheet of flames shot across the top of that escalator that I was on, and very soon the ceiling was on fire and debris started falling down. The escalator was still moving, so I very quickly turned around and started hurrying down the escalator, as did all the people on it.”

Lea said he escaped by returning to the tunnel and getting on a train that took him out of danger.

Police Supt. David Fitzsimmons said, “No one who was down there where the fire started could possibly be living.”

Eyewitness Paul Medland described the scene as the fire spread as one of panic and chaos. “People were running everywhere, panicking and treading on each other,” he said.

Firefighting teams left the underground network of platforms and walkways after the fire was put out because of possible health hazards from asbestos panels. Safety experts were sent in to assess the situation. The cause of the fire was not immediately known.

A fire brigade spokesman said he believes everyone in the station at the time has been accounted for. There had been several hours of confusion as firemen battled through dense smoke, and as the death toll rose, officials had believed that 30 people were still missing.

Underground trains were routed straight through the station as the fire raged. Leroy Bigby, a passenger on one train, told reporters: “As the train pulled into the station it hit a cloud of smoke. I could hear people screaming and running in every direction on the station.”

Survivors spoke of seeing bodies slumped against walls in the devastated ticket hall area.

Fire officers said an escalator was burned out and a large ticket hall completely gutted.

Fleets of ambulances shuttled the injured, many of them badly burned, to nearby hospitals.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said she was “absolutely horrified” by the tragedy and the head of the London subway, Keith Bright, said: “It is quite clearly a major tragedy.”

A government investigation team went to the scene of what officials said was one of the country’s worst-ever train disasters and the worst in London’s rail system since 43 people were killed in a crash in 1975.

The British capital’s underground network, universally known as “the Tube,” has one of the country’s best safety records despite carrying millions of passengers a day.

Smoking was banned in all underground stations and trains in January, 1985, after a fire trapped hundreds of people below ground the previous month at the busy Oxford Circus intersection.

Police and fire investigators said they were checking the possibility that the blaze could have been caused by a spark igniting rubbish.