At 02.18 on the morning of Thursday January 23rd 1958, a call was received to a fire at London's Smithfield Poultry Market. By the time firefighting operations had ended many days later, two members of the London Fire Brigade were dead, and another thirty in hospital.
The Construction of the buildings
The London Central Markets, of which the Poultry Market was a small part, consisted of four buildings covering an area of around ten acres. The Poultry Market covered an area approximately 255ft. by 245ft. The basement to these buildings was slightly larger due to it running under the adjacent pavements. Two of these buildings were known as The Meat Markets and one known as The General Market.
At the time of the fire it was estimated that around 800 tons of poultry, game and meat was stored at the market. The single story buildings were constructed of load bearing brick walls, partly faced with stone, and carried ornamental towers around 50 feet high at the corners and centres of buildings. A pitch-type slate on boarding roof containing wired louvers topped the structure. The roof was supported on cast iron columns braced with cast iron latticed "H" section beams, and rolled steel "H" beams. None of these beams were protected in any form against fire. The basement was constructed using a concrete floor. The ground floor which was about 2ft. thick was formed from brick arches, and covered with 8 inch thick stone slabs on unprotected cast iron joists and "H" beams. Inside the building the galleries and ground floor were partitioned to form offices and shops. These partitions were built from timber, lath and plaster on timber studwork, breeze blocks rendered with plaster, or plaster on expanded metal on brickwork.
The basement had been divided into around 90 storage compartments, many of which had been further sub-divided into smaller compartments. Many of these compartments were accessible via doors from basement corridors, but others could only be accessed by entering through trapdoors in the ground floor of the market. The access in the basement was further reduced by a railway tunnel which ran diagonally through it. This tunnel was bridged at 2 points by steps leading to crossovers, but these crossovers had limited headroom.
Other access to the basement was available by lifts within the building and other trapdoors which were set into the outside pavements. Further entry to the basement could be made via tunnels that were used to pass refrigerated air use to cool the basement. These tunnels contained heavily-insulated doors which formed air-locks in order to help prevent the escape of cold air. Some compartments were cooled with the tenant's own cooling units. One large section of the basement was insulated with slab cork covered with cement. Elsewhere, the basement was insulated with granulated cork, slab cork or slag wool held in place with timber studwork or match boarding. A large amount of bituminous sheeting was used in conjunction with the insulation. In some areas these sheets followed the roofline of the arches, in other places they bridged the arch and formed a void between the brickwork and the insulation.
The Fire
The first call to the brigade was made at 02.18am and was to a fire at The Union Cold Storage premises in Smithfield Street. Control mobilised one pump escape, 2 pumps, a turntable ladder and an emergency tender. On arrival a fire was discovered deep within the basement. The first objective of the brigade was to find the extent and seat of the fire.
One of the first crews to have entered the fire, wearing Proto breathing apparatus sets, was from the local station, Clerkenwell. Station Officer Jack Fort-Wells and Firefighter Richard Daniel (Dick) Stocking had headed down into the dense smoke filled basement and were never seen alive again.
Soon after their entry they had been buried under a collapse of pallet loads of frozen poultry and meat. Even though they were only yards from an exit; and fresh air, the oxygen supply to their breathing apparatus eventually ran out.
For 24 hours the objective was sought, but due to the excessive heat, dense smoke and worsening conditions crews could not work for more than 15 minutes at a time. Many men lasted even less and had to be carried out from the basement suffering from severe heat exhaustion. These conditions became so bad that eventually all crews had to be withdrawn. At around 3.00am on the Friday morning flames suddenly broke through the ground floor of the market. The intense heat and flammable gasses from the basement now had a route to escape and quickly filled the market.
Due to intense heat and flammable gasses, the entire market was now ablaze, with flames reaching over 100 feet into the cold winter air. All the Brigade could now do was to protect the surrounding buildings and allow the market to burn.
The stop message to control was sent at 16.45 on January 24th when 25 jets (including 12 radial branches) were still at work.
By Friday, February 7th there had been a total attendance of 450 pumps with more than 2,000 men from 58 fire stations who worked in relays at this fire. Over 800 oxygen cylinders had been used in the first 24 hours!
As a result of this incident, valuable lessons were learnt. A tally system was introduced which meant that a record was kept whenever any firefighter was wearing breathing apparatus. These tallies, in conjunction with a control board, indicated vital pieces of information: The time a firefighter entered a building; the BA wearer's location, the type of BA and the amount of oxygen the BA set being worn had contained. This information enabled the controller to work out an expected withdrawal time and enabled the controller to recall crews as their oxygen ran low. In the event of a problem, the controller would also know where subsequent crews were likely to locate firefighters. This became the basis of all BA control procedures still followed by Fire Brigades throughout the world.
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