Blasts tear through oil depot

**StudMuffin** · 11-12-2005, 08:01 PM

Three large explosions have rocked a fuel depot near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire shooting flames hundreds of feet into the sky. Police say there are casualties and emergency services are at the scene. The first blast happened at 0603 GMT at the Buncefield fuel depot, close to junction 8 of the M1 motorway, 10 miles from Luton airport.

It is being treated as an accident and rumours that a plane was involved are unfounded, said a police spokesman. Those living nearby have been evacuated. Many houses have been damaged, with some reporting feeling effects from the explosion as far away as Oxfordshire, while it was heard in Surrey and Norfolk.

Eye witnesses reported buckled front doors, cracked walls and blown-out windows. Witnesses said another two explosions followed the first at 0626 GMT and 0627 GMT. The Buncefield depot is a major distribution terminal operated by Total and part-owned by Texaco, storing oil, petrol and well as kerosene which supplies Luton airport.

BBC

**woke me up about 11 miles(18km) away, apparently it was heard upto 100 miles (160km) away. my uncles front door was blown off his house about 3 miles (5km) away**

**ADBOT** · 11-12-2005 08:01 PM

**jambo** · 11-12-2005, 09:21 PM

Jambo adds: It woke me up at 6AM!

**Buffy** · 11-12-2005, 10:29 PM

:woah:

**Donk** · 11-12-2005, 10:46 PM

That's going to leave a mark.

***Naiad*** · 11-12-2005, 10:52 PM

Originally Posted by Buffy

:woah:

Seconded.

**amj** · 11-12-2005, 11:14 PM

wow, that's 6km from my house! And I didn't hear it!

**Munchkin** · 12-12-2005, 03:17 AM

On the way back from work, I heard that the smoke cloud is bigger than London

You can see the smoke from my house as its drifting, scary stuff.

**dozer** · 12-12-2005, 03:29 AM

made for a nice sunset tonight though, at 4pm.

**StudMuffin** · 12-12-2005, 04:16 AM

Originally Posted by jambo

Jambo adds: It woke me up at 6AM!

yeah me too, and i slept through the house next door to me burning down twice

**label** · 12-12-2005, 04:50 AM

Althought the smoke fumes are not thought to be toxic, advice is to not leave windows/ doors open to limit the inhalation.

**moonbuggy** · 12-12-2005, 04:50 AM

I'm having a bit of the old insomnia and had nothing better to do, so I did a bit of calculation for fun.

According to this eyewitness the walls of his house were visibly moving at a distance of one mile from the blast, and all the windows are smashed out.

Some security site says an overpressure of 1.1 PSI is required to ensure all glass surfaces are destroyed, so this is a reasonable lower limit I think.

To blow doors off, buckle walls and rip the toilet off the floor as the witness stated happened, an overpressure of around 2 PSI or more would be required. An overpressure of 4 or more PSI would start to collapse buildings more noticably, so that's a reasonable upper limit, I figure.

I reckon the most reasonable figure based on the little information available so far would be a 2-3 PSI overpressure was experienced at a distance of a mile from the blast.

According to this cool blast effects simulator at a distance of 1 mile you'd need a 3kT blast [i.e. equivalent to 3,000 tons of TNT] to achieve an overpressure of 1 PSI, 10kT for 2 PSI and 45kT for 5 PSI [a bit above the upper limit, but best this simulator will do].

Yields from the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima were roughly 25 and 13kT, respectively.

So, based on these very rough calculations it seems the initial blast atleast was comparable in scale to the nuclear weapons used on the Japanese in WWII.

Although, I would suspect the blast wave from an oil explosion would be broader than that from a TNT/nuclear explosion, and I do believe broader waves do more structural damage, so this might be a slight over estimate of the actual energy yield, but accurate in terms of damage. [shrug] It really depends on what exactly exploded and a bunch of other things that are too hard to think about at nearly 5am..

Like I say I couldn't sleep.

And I was reading something about nuclear weapons earlier in the day and I figured it'd be interesting to compare this explosion to those.

I'm sure the people in England [and France and Holland] who heard and maybe even saw the blast don't need me to be telling them that it was pretty fucken big.

**moonbuggy** · 12-12-2005, 04:58 AM

Originally Posted by label

Althought the smoke fumes are not thought to be toxic, advice is to not leave windows/ doors open to limit the inhalation.

Incomplete combustion products are almost always carcinogenic to some extent. Even burnt toast has detectable amounts of known carginogens in it. And you don't even want to know about how much acrolein you find in potatoes once you cook them.

I'd definately avoid breathing the smoke if it's anywhere near you. I would think the authorities are saying the smoke is "not known to be toxic" primarily to minimize panic, and since they wouldn't have had time to analyze the components of the smoke yet they can say that without actually lying. [shrug]

Does the UK still use leaded petrol at all? If so, the smoke is definately going to be quite nasty.

**evil** · 12-12-2005, 05:59 AM

Photo up at Kenwood house/hampstead heath/Nth London at 4:10pm. Photo doesn't do it justice ...

**moonbuggy** · 12-12-2005, 07:59 PM

British authorities say they have contained a fire raging at a fuel depot that injured 43 people, but it will take a day to burn itself out. [..]

"It could go into days," Roy Wilsher, fire department spokesman, told reporters.

He described the fire as "the largest I've seen."

Wilsher said 250 million liters (more than 66 million gallons) of foam concentrate -- to be mixed with water to create flame suppressant foam -- was "on the way to us."

"We're working with the oil industry experts to see if even that's enough," he said.

source: CNN
via: me