On 30 Sep, 00:35, Mizter T wrote:
On Sep 29, 4:28*pm, Roy Badami wrote:

On 29/09/10 14:36, Mizter T wrote:

There's a rather dark side to the passageway though, which doesn't
really match up with it's smiley façade.

What kind of dark side? *Rather more dreary decor? *Dangerous to walk
down at night? *Literally dark, as in lacking illumination?

I was a bit hazy on the details, so I've just taken the opportunity to
look at an authoritative source - the Fennell Report into the King's
Cross fire. This is available on the Railways Archive website as a PDF
(which is text searchable) - see:
http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/eventsummary.php?eventID=138

What follows is just my interpretation based on a pretty quick and
distinctly incomplete scan through of the full report, so please don't
take it as gospel.

On the night of the fire, one member of LU staff redirected some
passengers to this passageway leading to the Midland City exit so as
to escape from the fire, but unbeknown to him it was blocked by locked
gates - these passengers then returned and some understandably gave
him some stick.

Why didn't they direct anyone to the northern line's emergency stairs?
They still seem to be there (behind aluminium slats on a narrow door
on each of the platforms), even now after all this building work. And
they would have lead outside the ticket hall area back then.

Or the piccadilly line stairs (assuming they are still there after the
victoria line was built - the lobby is certainly still there).?

What's the point of having emergency stairs if they are ignored when
there's an emergency.

In message
,
lonelytraveller writes

Why didn't they direct anyone to the northern line's emergency stairs?

I think the short answer is that the fire was initially thought to be
small, and that evacuation via the Victoria line escalator was thought
to be safe.

Add to this the fact that the station had no evacuation plan, and those
initially trying to evacuate passengers were two Met police officers and
six members of the BTP (BR Eastern Region), none of whom had any
detailed knowledge of the station's complex layout. The Fennel Report
said that the two Met officers genuinely believed that the Victoria line
escalator was the only other available exit. Even when the fire brigade
arrived, they couldn't access the station plans or communicate with most
of the LT staff (the infamous radio problem) and so they, too, were
probably unaware of the emergency stairs.

In the end, most of the passengers from the deep-level platforms were
evacuated by tube (Victoria line), which was probably safer than
encouraging hundreds of panicky people to attempt the long climb up the
emergency stairs.

--
Paul Terry