I have only recently joined this forum, and I know this is now an old topic, but, in csse anyone is still interested in this subject, I was actually within the Woolworths store when the fire broke out. It was 1979 and I was about to go on an overseas posting and was looking for somewhere to stock up on my favourite shampoo at a low price. It was a Saturday and I had just entered Woollies and was browsing ont he ground floor when I heard a commotion and lots of folks were running down the escalators shouting. Screaming started, and I assumed it was football fans or what we then used to call 'steamers' - yobs who ran mob-handed through a crowd, grabbing bags and wallets and running off with them. Wisely, I decided to leave the store and I crossed Piccadilly to Lewis's where, in their basement, I bought lots of my shampoo. half an hour later, I emerged, laden with 4 heavy carrier bags of shampoo bottles and headed back towards the Woolworth's side to head for Piccadilly Station, when I came to a police cordon. I looked up and saw three people standing on the ledge of a window above Woollies. They looked panic stricken as the window panes shattered behind them from the heat of the blaze and black acrid smoke poured out around them causing them to choke. The fire engine's ladder did not seem long enough to reach them and the rescue was taking a very long time. I only found out the next day that the real tragedy had occurred around the back of the building, in the accounts & wages room, the windows of which were heavily barred and in which a number of women were trapped and either suffocated or burned to death. The fire was alleged to have begun in the furniture dept, possibly with a lighted cigarette tossed onto a foam sofa. After this, they tightened up the laws on flammable furniture. It was an incident I shall never forget however.