Oil Refinery Blew up in Hemel Hempstead

anyone else seen the news. the oil refinery thingy blew up in Hemel... got some friends there. they both alright. but they said that the explosion had a huge shockwave. the blast woke them up. some of their neighbours windows got shattered by the shockwave. any thoughts on it?

 

Sat Imagery shows the plume, north of London; I bet the immediate area wreaks of Kerosene right now.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v173/star17abby/LS545a.gif

 

Im in canterbury i have to get back to suffolk for work tommorow i might not be able to make it.

Damn it i might have to take the week off damn

 

Yayup...ignore those booms; it's just your oil prices going up

 

A tad...= +/- 06p?

 

My mum heard the explosion! As did my GF's dad. We're a LONG way away from Hemel Hempstead!! You can see the black smoke on the horizon hopefully we won't get a load of soot falling on us - that'd be rather bad for asthma sufferers..

 

For a blast/fire that size, it's good that there were no fatalities and so few injuries.

 

I was working in a new hospital building in Alesbury today,wiring up fire boxes of all things and this pic was similar to the view we had all morning.The blast was felt for miles around,though i seemed to missed it? Probably what woke me up ! The fires still raging and could take days to burn out.Pic taken from NSRA forum.

http://img182.imageshack.us/img182/1769/fromadistance2qu.jpg

 

a friend sent me video footage. she apparently submitted it to bbc news as well. i will host it later if anyone's interested.

 

jesus wept! was anybody hurt?

 

apparently there were about 30 casualties but as yet i don't think any deaths. only about 2 serious injuries.

 

Someone will say they heard this on the internet-

Way to go!

LOL

 

I got a picture of the smoke plume from my school today on my phone - we're in High Wycombe. Not as good as Wild's photo but still... it's tricky to work out what in the sky is cloud and what is smoke.

 

Its being described as the largest explosion in peace time europe the only thing that has come close was a fireworks factory explosion in the dutch town of enschede in which an estimated 100 tons of explosives detonated in a residential area

http://www.stop-fireworks.org/accidents_enschede.htm

Of the people killed were 4 firefighters,I hope our guys fighting the blaze will be OK,I cant imagine what its like running toward something like that when everyone else is running away

 

I can see the flames and the smoke when it's dark. That's how close I live, just over a mile away....

 

It was really exciting. In a non-sadistic kind of way. Whole house shook and and and I woke up, and thought it was thunder. Naturally the fact the sky was bright red at 6am didn't disturb me.
The toxic cloud of doom wasn't visible today as itw as cloudy. But yesterday it was pretty scary!

 

A school about 3 miles away from us was closed due to the smoke. I think the staff just wanted a day off. I'm on the top of a hill, and they are in a valley. If it was bad enough that they couldn't go to school then I (and Hugga for that matter) would be very dead by now.....

mcadam - wow, just a mile! No property damage I hope!

 

House shook and my bed shook a lot. It was quite ermm....weird! Cars parked in the village lost windows too!

 

A few more pictures, I wonder how far that car was blown?

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b214/Rikky_/pic2234.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b214/Rikky_/pic2233.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b214/Rikky_/pic2232.jpg

http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b214/Rikky_/pic2231.jpg

 

That car must've been very near because it didn't do as much damage to buildings about 50ft away.

 

Nice pictures!

I wish I had the chance to photograph it....

 

buuuuuump Hemel Hempstead made the wikepedia largest non nuclear explosions,the list also provides some nice historic info of other explosions the largest ever in Halifax which killed 2000

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_non-nuclear_explosions

The halifax explosion, some awsome facts and pics of the disaster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Hertfordshire_Oil_Storage_Terminal_fire