Chapter 5 Human error: The Great Fire of London. Days, weeks, months or years after a disaster it is often easy to look back and see where things went wrong. This is maybe especially true of disasters that are caused by human error - usually small mistakes with very big results. The Great Fire of London started as a small kitchen fire, but its effects changed the city of London for ever. In the seventeenth century London was a city full of rats: rats in the streets, rats in the houses, rats in the shops. In the year 1665 thousands of people in London died from a terrible disease carried by rats. Nobody felt safe from disease and death. The next year, 1666, there was a long hot summer. People were glad to enjoy the sunshine, and they felt that it probably helped the city to get rid of disease. But in fact the disease was finally destroyed by something much more powerful: fire. It was two o'clock in the morning on Sunday 2nd September 1666. Thomas Farynor, who made bread for King Charles the Second, was asleep above his shop near the River Thames and London Bridge. It was time for his men to start preparing bread for the king's breakfast; the king liked fresh bread in the morning. One of Mr Farynor's men woke up and went to light the kitchen fires. Mr Farynor's men kept a lot of wood in his kitchen, ready to cook the bread every day. That morning the man discovered that some wood was on fire, and the kitchen was beginning to burn! Quickly the man woke Mr Farynor and shouted, 'Fire!' Soon the whole house was awake, and people were running everywhere, trying to escape. Mr Farynor escaped by climbing onto the roof of the next house. In a short time the fire spread to other houses, and a strong wind blew the flames towards the west. The fire moved quickly through the old city. The houses were made of wood and were built very close together in narrow streets. As the fire spread it destroyed everything in its way, but it could not cross the River Thames. There was panic everywhere as people tried to save their possessions. We have some very good descriptions of the fire that night. Samuel Pepys was an important man in the government of King Charles, and every day he wrote a...