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The 1992 Windsor Castle fire occurred on Friday, 20 November 1992 in Windsor Castle, west of London, the largest inhabited castle in the world and one of the official residences of the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The castle suffered severe damage in a fire, and was fully repaired within the next few years at a cost of £36.5 million, in a project led by conservation architects, Donald Insall Associates. The question of how the funds required should be found raised important issues about the financing of the monarchy, and led to Buckingham Palace being opened to the public for the first time to help to pay for the restoration. ==Progress of the fire== The fire began in the Queen's Private Chapel at 11:33 am on Friday 20 November 1992, when a spotlight ignited a curtain.〔( Public back in Windsor Castle ), ''BBC News'', 27 December 1997〕 The alarm went off in the watch-room of the Castle fire brigade, manned by Chief Fire Office Marshall Smith. The site of the fire was shown by a light on a large grid map of the whole castle. Initially the Brunswick Tower alone was indicated, but lights soon lit up indicating that the fire had quickly spread to several neighbouring rooms. The major part of the State Apartments was soon ablaze. Patrolling firemen were paged by an automatic system, and at 11:37 am Mr Smith pressed the switch to alert the Control Room at Reading. He then activated the public fire alarm, known as an ER7 alert (a continuous high pitch tone), and telephoned the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service on a direct line. Mr Smith proceeded to the Brunswick Tower to assess the situation, and to begin the salvage operations which, together with fire precautions, had been the main responsibility of the castle brigade since the county force took over responsibility for fire-fighting at Windsor Castle in September 1991. The Castle still had its own 20-strong force, of whom six were full-time. Equipped with a Land Rover and pump tender, they were based in the Royal Mews, stables south of the castle. The first appliances of the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service arrived at the castle between 11:44 am and 11:45 am, some 7–8 minutes after the alert was given. By 11:48 am 10 pumping appliances had been ordered to the fire and the principal officer on duty within the brigade the Deputy Chief Officer David Harper had been informed. By 12:12 pm there were 20 engines, and by 12:20 pm there were 35, with over 200 firemen from London, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, and Oxfordshire, as well as from Berkshire. The Fire Incident Commander was David Harper, Deputy Chief Fire and Rescue Officer of the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service. The Chief Officer Garth Scotford was out of the country, on holiday. By 12:20 pm the fire had spread to St George's Hall, the largest of the State Apartments, and further reinforcements were called. The fire-fighting forces by then totalled 39 appliances (including two hydraulic platforms) and 225 fire-fighters. As an indication of the scale of the fire, there had been only one 30-appliance fire in the whole of Greater London since 1973. By 1:30 pm firebreaks had been erected by tradesmen at the southern wall of the Green Drawing Room (at the end of St George's Hall on the east side of the Quadrangle), and at the north-west corner at Chester Tower, where that tower joins the Grand Corridor. The fire-fighters had by this time begun to bring the fire under control (though the roof of the State Apartments had begun to collapse). At 3:30 pm the fire was surrounded, and the floors of the Brunswick Tower collapsed, concentrating the fire there. Firemen had to temporarily withdraw to locate three men who were briefly lost in the smoke, and on a second occasion withdrew when men were temporarily unaccounted for when a roof fell in. At 4:15 pm the fire had revived in the Brunswick Tower. As night fell the fire was concentrated in the Brunswick Tower, which by 6:30 pm was engulfed in flames high, which could be seen for many miles. At 7 pm the fire broke through the roof of the tower, and later the roof of St George's Hall finally collapsed into the conflagration. By 8 pm the fire was finally under control, having burnt for nine hours, although it continued to burn for a further three hours. By 11 pm, however, the main fire was extinguished, and by 2:30 am the last secondary fires were put out. Pockets of fire remained alive until early Saturday, some 15 hours later. Sixty firemen with eight appliances remained on duty for several more days. The fire had spread rapidly due to lack of fire stopping in cavities and roof voids.〔Purkiss, 2007, p. 12〕 Over one million gallons (4,500 cubic metres) of water from Castle mains and from the River Thames had been used in fighting the fire. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「1992 Windsor Castle fire」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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