Whipped Cream Difficulties

I haven’t paid enough attention to firefighters. Let me fix that.

Vintage LA Fire Department propaganda film from 1949. Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

And the senses shattering part 4:

Bonus: LAFD and the 1st Interstate Bank Fire.

Extinguishing this blaze at the 62-story First Interstate Bank Building, 707 West Wilshire Boulevard, required the combined efforts of 64 fire companies, 10 City rescue ambulances, 17 private ambulances, 4 helicopters, 53 Command Officers and support personnel, a complement of 383 Firefighters and Paramedics, and considerable assistance from other City departments.
It is humbling and terrifying to realize how close we came to losing control of this fire!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Here’s a little slice of history for all of you “Emergency” fans out there: “Sirens In the Night”, a 1972 documentary about the Jacksonville Fire Department. Jacksonville was (according to the YouTube captions) the first fire department in the US to provide EMS services.

In November 1967, Mayor Hans Tanzler placed emergency ambulance service permanently in the care of the Jacksonville Fire Department. The Rescue Division began with six station wagons, each staffed by a chief and two firefighters, equipped with first aid kits and folding Army cots for stretchers. Within a few months the department equipped and staffed six new modular transport vehicles for continuous 24-hour service. Crews soon became aware that they were in over their heads due to the nature of the calls, a large proportion of which were cardiac related, so the department connected with area doctors eager to provide better training. With advanced medical training and better equipment, the Jacksonville Fire Department saved more lives, and Jacksonville became known as the ‘safest city in the world to have a heart attack.’

…

Notable accomplishments of the JFRD are:
1. Establishing one of the first Advanced Life Support (ALS) service in the nation;
2. Establishing the first Hazardous Materials team in 1977;
3. Becoming the first fire department to successfully extinguish a fully involved petroleum tank fire

Bonus video: from 1959, Mike Wallace interviews Rod Serling.

A while back, I found a book at Half-Price Books: Body 115: The Mystery of the Last Victim of the King’s Cross Fire (affiliate link, but please do not pay those prices).

Sometime around 7:30 PM on November 18, 1987, somebody threw away a lit match or a burning cigarette butt or something on the escalator at King’s Cross Station in the London Underground. Whatever was burning fell between the wooden treads and apparently landed on something flammable. Later investigation revealed that the underside of the escalator was full of discarded trash, fluff, old grease, and other things that would burn easily.

The resulting fire seemed small and easily controlled. The London Fire Brigade was dispatched at 7:36 PM. The police started evacuating the station at 7:39 PM.

A few minutes later the fire brigade arrived and several firemen went down to the escalator to assess the fire. They saw a fire about the size of a large cardboard box and planned to fight it with a water jet using men with breathing apparatus.

At 7:45 PM, the fire blew up into a flashover. 31 people died.

There was one man who was burned beyond recognition and who the authorities couldn’t identify. He became known as “Body 115”.

In 2004, the unknown man was finally identified as Alexander Fallon.

Body 115 and the King’s Cross fire fascinate me for two reasons. One is the amount of time and effort spent identifying the unknown man. The book is like a good non-fiction detective story, but with no real crime: just the search to put a name to an unknown man and maybe give his people some sense of…closure. It was an extraordinary, multiple organization effort spread across years.

I think sometimes you find people who view things with a certain exceptionalism. “Well, sure, we British would take 16 years to put a name to a unknown fire victim. Do you think they’d do that in America? They’re too busy chasing dope dealers with assault weapons.” Well, yes, actually: look up Little Miss 1565. Or the Boy in the Box. Or “Orange Socks“, to name some US specific examples.

I’m not saying the British or the Americans are superior. I’m saying I think this kind of thing happens in every country, and we don’t hear about most of them unless they grab the public’s imagination. I’m sure there are police officers in Japan or Germany trying to tie names to unknown bodies. Look at the work of EAAF, for another example.

The only exceptionalism involved here is the exceptionalism of being human, of wanting to find answers, solve mysteries, and comfort others.

The other reason King’s Cross fascinates me is the dynamics of the fire. Why did it suddenly go from “the size of a large cardboard box” and easily controllable to a massive flashover?

The Atomic Energy Research Establishment (which had a supercomputer) set up computer simulations of the fire at the request of the investigators. They found something strange: the fire actually laid down along the escalator treads, instead of burning straight up like they expected. The people who set up the simulation actually thought that their code was buggy: maybe they had gravity going the wrong way, or some mistake like that.

So the investigative teams built scale models of King’s Cross, set them on fire…and the fire behaved exactly like the simulation did. The flames laid down along the escalator. The metal sides of the escalator contained the heat and flames, and with the fire laying down on the escalator, it rapidly heated the wooden treads. The treads, under heat, started decomposing and giving off combustible gasses. At the same time, radiant heat directed upwards was heating layers of old paint above the escalator shaft. All of these things combined, but especially the “laying down” behavior of the fire, contributed to the flashover.

That phenomenon became known as the “trench effect“.

Bonus #1: this is an episode of “Seconds From Disaster” that covers the fire itself. It doesn’t spend a lot of time on Body 115, but it does give you a clear idea of what happened and the investigative process.

Bonus #2:

Fire Brigade station officer Colin Townsley was in charge of the first pump fire engine to arrive at the scene and was down in the ticket hall at the time of the flashover. He was killed in the fire; his body was found beside that of a badly burnt passenger at the base of the exit steps to Pancras Road. It is believed that Townsley spotted the passenger in difficulty and stopped to help her.

Station Officer Townsley was posthumously awarded the George Medal.