The Oxford Circus fire occurred on Friday 23 November 1984 at 9:50 p.m. at Oxford Circus station on the London Underground. Oxford Circus station is in the heart of London's shopping district and is served by three deep-level tube lines: the Bakerloo Line, Central Line and Victoria Line. The three lines are linked by a complex network of tunnels and cross-passages and come to a common booking hall situated beneath the junction of Oxford Street and Regent Street.
The fire started in a materials store at the south end of the northbound Victoria Line platform, which was being used by contractors working on the modernisation of the station. It gutted the northbound Victoria Line platform tunnel and the passages leading off it. The adjacent northbound Bakerloo Line platform suffered smoke damage, as did the escalator tunnel and the booking hall. Other areas of the station were undamaged. The probable cause of the fire was smokers' materials being pushed through a ventilation grille into the materials store. This ignited rags or paint thinner within the store.
Read more about Oxford Circus Fire: Evacuation, Injuries, Reconstruction, Effects On Services, Smoking Bans
Famous quotes containing the words oxford, circus and/or fire:
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)
“Winter and summer till old age began
My circus animals were all on show,
Those stilted boys, that burnished chariot,
Lion and woman and the Lord knows what.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“In England if something goes wrong—say, if one finds a skunk in the garden—he writes to the family solicitor, who proceeds to take the proper measures; whereas in America, you telephone the fire department. Each satisfies a characteristic need; in the English, love of order and legalistic procedure; and here in America, what you like is something vivid, and red, and swift.”
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)