King's Cross evacuation: Delays after passenger leans on fire alarm and 'controller's key gets jammed'

London Underground commuters faced rush-hour delays on 13 January after a comedy of errors at King's Cross apparently caused the station to be evacuated.

Station workers conducted an evacuation of the Tube station, which serves the Circle, Hammersmith & City, Metropolitan, Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines, shortly before 9am. "King's Cross station is currently closed while we investigate a fire alert," Transport for London tweeted.

Passengers caught in the delays tweeted photos of tailbacks and one claimed the evacuation happened after a station controller's keys got jammed trying to deactivate the alarm.

So someone lent on the fire alarm. Station controller couldn't reset in time wth key jammed = Kings Cross tube station evacuated #RushHour
— Tracy Lamond (@tracylamond) January 13, 2016

A TfL spokesman said the alarm was set off accidentally at 8.40am but that services were back up and running shortly after 9am. He was unable to confirm if the station controller's keys had been jammed.