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did any one else feel the blast from the Hemel Hempstead oil depot explosion.
I live half an hour drive away & my windows rattled.

Got a photo of the sky round you?

cant see any smoke but if you go to sky or BBC news its on there.

We know hemmel very well as we used to live in St. Albans. That explosion must have done some real dammage. Havn't shown much on the news here yet. We don't have sky yet either. So can't keep up with the news.

Hi Tel!

Here in Tring we felt it pretty bad! My house didn't stop shaking for quite a while. At first I thought I was imagining it. I looked out the window thinking maybe a lorry had crashed into the row of houses we are in. I couldn't see anything so went back to bed. Wasn't til I put the tv on at 8.30 that I saw what had happened. I wasn't going mad afterall. Scary thing is - a week ago I had a dream where I woke up in the same way after an explosion, there was loads of black smoke in the distance...just like today! Maybe it was a premonition? It has certainly shaken me up.

I have called all my friends that live around the area that it happened and they are all ok, but have been told that they may still be evacuated.

Who knows what the environmental implications are.

Hi Emmalou
that is a spooky thing made me shiver when i read it

Here in Chesham we had a pretty big shockwave.  I too woke up thinking I'd dreamt it - felt like a massive thunderclap that had gone off directly over the house.   Windows shook,  and I thought it was a storm till I looked out of the window and saw stars... then I thought perhaps it had been a dream until heard the much smaller later explosions.  Couldn't see anything (house is surrounded by trees in the Hemel direction) so went back to sleep. Got woken again by friends calling to see if I was ok!

Glad I am not visiting the folks as I'd be really stuffed getting back if I was.  And of course it's Sunday. By about 4pm on a normal Sunday, the M1 south is one big jam from jn 10 downwards with people returning. It's going to be murder later today!

moonbells

All roads are closed for a 10 mile radius. Including the motorways.

I have had kids popping in for past couple of hours. I do hope there are not many injuries. Going to flick on the news.

I felt the blast here in West London. I was watching the news at the time and the London reporter thought it was an explosion nearby. Must have been one hell of a bang. I hope everyone is ok.

We went out this evening to have a look at it from the A41 bypass bridge. It is unbelievable how far the smoke spreads across the area. It looks very unreal. Luckily the wind is blowing away from us so we aren't getting any smoke here. There was a little bit of smoke this morning, but it went quite quickly.

My neighbour got some spectactular photo's from Berkhamsted and looking towards the Ashridge College from the Bridgewater monument. I will have to see if he can forward the pictures to me.

HEMEL HEMPSTEAD (Reuters) - Explosions tore through a fuel depot north of London on Sunday, spewing out a huge tower of smoke and flame in what officials said could be one of the biggest blasts of its kind in peacetime Europe.

Police said only one person was seriously injured and believed it was almost certainly an accident.

"There is nothing that indicates anything other than an accident," Hertfordshire Chief Constable Frank Whiteley told a news conference after Britons, still on edge from July bomb attacks in London, awoke to fresh images of destruction.
Witnesses described a series of massive explosions at the Buncefield oil depot just after 6 a.m., shooting flames and billowing smoke hundreds of feet into the air, blowing out the windows of nearby homes and causing widespread damage.

A Reuters witness said the blast was heard 25 miles away in northwest London.

The county's chief fire officer, Roy Wilsher, said it was the largest fire he had seen and would burn for at least another 24 hours.

"We have been informed by experts that this is possibly the largest incident of this kind in peacetime Europe," he said.

Hours later, the sky was still blackened by smoke which had drifted miles across southern England and was big enough to be visible on space satellite images.

Health officials said the pall of smoke was unlikely to harm most people, but warned those living around the depot to stay indoors and keep windows and doors shut.

"If there was going to be a large-scale reaction I would expect that we would have started to see the signs of it by now," Jane Halpin, director of public health for the region, told a news conference.

BONE-JARRING BLAST

Police said there were 43 casualties but only one person appeared to have suffered serious injuries. "At the moment it looks as if we got off a lot more lightly than you would expect with an explosion of this size," Whiteley said.

People living in the Hemel Hempstead area were shaken by what they said was a bone-jarring blast.

Mike Carlish, who lives 3 miles from the Buncefield depot, said he had been woken by a "blinding white flash" and a blast so powerful it knocked plaster off the ceiling in his house.

Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott visited the scene and praised the emergency services' work.

"He was just glad that the number of people injured was small and that there were no fatalities," a spokesman said.

Officials said the explosions were unlikely to cause fuel shortages and urged motorists to avoid panic buying of petrol. But witnesses reported queues of drivers at petrol stations.

The Buncefield depot supplies petrol and fuel oils to a large part of southeast England, including Luton and Heathrow airports. Oil is brought to the depot, near the town of Hemel Hempstead, by underground pipeline from tankers unloading on the east coast.

A government spokesman said when full, the depot holds five percent of Britain's oil supply, but they could not say how much it was holding before the blast.

He said oil industry chiefs were meeting to work out how to guarantee supplies from other distribution terminals.

"There is nothing to suggest there will be a fuel shortage as a result of this," Whiteley said.

The depot, the fifth largest in Britain, is jointly run by oil companies Total and Texaco. Police said about half the plant had been destroyed.

ooops i didn't notice this thread before i went and wrote my own ::)

The first blast woke my in-laws up - they live in a village about 8 miles from Hemel. They said it felt like an earthquake(apparently it registered 2.4 on the Richter scale!). And the black cloud drifted over Bluewater about 1pm - got very dark and my daughter wanted to know what the funny smell was.

Cheers,
Rob ;)

I didn't feel it, but boy did I smell it!

About half way through our riding lesson (so about midday) a cloud of thick blackness appeared on the horizon and then gradually drifted until it blocked out the sun. It was so thick it was like someone had just turned out the lights. Smelt pretty nasty. At first I thought I was just imagining the smell, but others could smell it too.

I do worry where all that is going to end up.

this is a pic from about 6 miles away

idyllic view - except for the cloud. but still.....

I have been worrying about the wind direction but so far it's been going south so the lotties here haven't yet had any of the cloud over them. I am hoping they finally muffle it today so the risk is removed completely. Even my non-gardening hubby remarked he hoped it wouldn't swing round cos he was worried about pollutants on the veggies!

I feel for those of you in the line of drift...  but at least it's winter,  not much is growing and with luck, any pollutants will leach out before the main planting season comes round again.

moonbells