Memorial service for victims of King's Cross fire 30 years on

Victims' families and survivors have gathered for a minute's silence in memory of those who died in the King's Cross fire 30 years ago.

Emergency services personnel who responded to the blaze on November 18 1987 joined the memorial service at the north London Tube station on Saturday.

Thirty-one people died and around 60 were injured when an escalator fire, thought to have been caused by a dropped match, ripped through part of the station.

The devastation and a subsequent public inquiry led to stricter fire safety regulations.

Leading the short service, London Fire Brigade chaplain the Rev Ian Black said of those affected: "We will remember them in silence in our hearts."

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan laid wreaths alongside Transport for London commissioner Mike Brown, under a plaque in the ticket hall near where the fire took hold.

Relatives said their memories of the day remain "fresh".

Deirdre Holloway, whose brother Christopher Roome was killed, said: "It seems amazing that it was 30 years ago. It seems quite fresh. My brother would be 80 now."

Mr Roome, a stockbroker, had been travelling back from work in the city to his flat in Pimlico, central London, when he was evacuated from a train at the station.

Ms Holloway, from Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, said her brother managed to escape but suffered 75% burns and died a little more than a week after the blaze.

Recalling speaking to him in hospital she said: "He said how glad he was to get out, he said 'I don't know how I survived, it was hell down there'."