Fires

Many of the fires that cause disruption to railway operations result from fires involving cylinders that contain various gasses used for industrial purposes in premises on or near to railway lines. While all of these present significant hazards, fires involving acetylene cylinder are the most disruptive. Work has been on-going for a number of years to reduce this impact.
As a preventative measure, in July 2006 LFB launched the 'Safe Cylinder Campaign', which highlighted issues around the use of cylinders, particularly acetylene, and what can be done by site or cylinder owners to reduce these incidents. This campaign was presented to representatives of the London Boroughs and was supported with leaflets provided to cylinder users.
In an operational response context, LFB has been the lead fire service in work undertaken by the national 'cylinders in fires' working group. The working group brought together representation from the Fire Services (LFB and Greater Manchester), the transport industry (including TfL, Highways Agency & Network Rail), CFRA and the cylinder industry through the British Compressed Gases Association.
As a result of research carried out on behalf of the group, the response protocols at cylinder incidents has been changed, significantly reducing the disruption previously caused by large precautionary evacuation zones. These changes were adopted by LFB and have been mirrored by several Fire Services nationwide and is the procedure being recommended in the new 'Hazardous Materials Incident - Guidance for Fire Services' publication issued by CLG.
Between 2004 and 2011 the changes to the cylinder procedure have seen a dramatic effect on the disruption caused by cylinder incidents in London of which there were 576 with 108 involving acetylene. As a direct result, there has been a reduction from a rate of 1 cylinder incident on average every 14 days to 1 every 25 days and a reduction in the average disruption time from 19 hours per incident to 2.5 hours per incident. So far in 2012 the average disruption remains at approximately 2 hours per incident and the incident occurrence rate has reduced further to 1 in 31 days.