Something woke me up last night, I thought it was something on the roof... but it turns out it wasn't.
I'd also like to add that I was about 30 miles away - and I initially thought it was something happening to my house.
It's a miracle that so far, this inferno has killed nobody. Let's hope it stays that way, as two heavily injured people seem not be be quite on the safe side yet.
Dear lord, it's indeed a blessing that no one was fatally hurt by this, at least not at this juncture. How the heck did this happen, though? And why am I almost certain that it was something as small and stupid as someone disregarding a 'No Smoking' sign?
NO WAY! [quote:76a4fadf25]A fire chief described the incident at the Buncefield fuel depot near Hemel Hempstead, after 0600 GMT, as possibly the largest in peacetime Europe.[/quote:76a4fadf25] Hopefully the two seriously injured people will fully recover. If so then we've been so so lucky that an explosion of that size hasn't killed anyone.
God, yeah. I hope nobody dies. Kenny's right, two casualties is a tiny amount for such a huge explosion. The pictures on the news were astounding. The sky was completely black. It's amazing that it could be heard that far away.
Well I was speaking to one of my housemates... and apparently the explosion was enough to make his bedroom door open by itself :? You're right guys, how no-one has been killed yet is a miracle.
i'm going to assume the injuries are so few simply because a fuel depot is usually NOT a hotbed of social gatherings at 6am. and let's just be thankful for that and keep our fingers crossed with whatever spiritual signifigance we wish to impart to the folks who were hurt. also, benolium, i just realized what your avatar is.
Me too! *slaps head* Involve a little negligence and the usual carelessness, and it can go very different. A few years ago (2000), a firm maintained an illegal depot for fireworks in the inner city of Enschede, a town only an hour's drive away in the Netherlands (we are very close to the border). Yes,[i:bd9f179f5a] inner city[/i:bd9f179f5a]. When the depot blew up after malicious arson, it basically blasted away a big chunk of the inner city. I think about 20 people were killed and almost 600 injured. 200 buildings (mostly family homes) were destroyed and thousands damaged. The mall that was the centre of the city was simply blown away, the place were the markets took place either - only last summer, the inner city was, after a lot of renovating and building, completed again. There would have been far, far more deaths hadn't it been Sunday and mall as well as market place relatively deserted. I'll never quite forget how we woke up that Sunday moring, an hour away from the incident, because the sirens of the fire engines that were ordered to help wouldn't stop - they didn't until afternoon.
Hey I've been to Luton airport, I know where that is. Its massive, I saw some of the news coverage on it last night...
I hope this thing burns itself out soon, I can imagine the mess its going to be. That is a whole lot of soot.
eeek! seconding Garner's motion about the hurt folks. (and Spiky, your sig has given me some extremely UNPLEASANT visual images... involving hairy body parts, scotch tape and the impending removal of the latter!)
[quote:0a09955466="mowgli"]eeek! seconding Garner's motion about the hurt folks. (and Spiky, your sig has given me some extremely UNPLEASANT visual images... involving hairy body parts, scotch tape and the impending removal of the latter!)[/quote:0a09955466] I think Kenny should explain... but from the discussion it came from, their power could derive from a platform of chrissie present wrapping, but then again maybe not.
It shook the house im staying in, and later in the day we drove past it the smoke was terrible it looked like a volcanoe!!
Out of interest, is this getting much press internationally? Obviously it's the main news here, taking up the majority of the bulletins, but I'd be interested to know how much other countries are devoting to it.
Yes - what CY said - plus (in the newspapers), the Dutch press now concentrate on the fact that the cloud is heading across France and towards Spain as opposed to this way....Also - in other news, - the Fire Service have been on strike here - they return to work today. No connection of course but it causes some comment.
Ok, I don't know how far away I live, but I'm 70 south of central London, and two of my family heard the explosions! I assume I must have done as well, because I had a dream that was so disturbing I woke up at 6:30 feeling compelled to turn the news on (trust me, this is out of character).
Love the sig Spikey! I'd like to think my third testicle is the brains behind the double act as that is where Men do most of their thinking after all. I think the Scotch Tape is more like the Pinky of the outfit. Scotch Tape "What are we doing tonight Testi" Testi "The same as every night Scotch, were going to take over the world....."
Hahahaha................... majorly funny I havn't heard of that cartoonb in ages. thanx you just brought back some really cool memories. :lol:
[quote:5e974abffb="colonesque10"] Scotch Tape "What are we doing tonight Testi" Testi "The same as every night Scotch, were going to take over the world....." [/quote:5e974abffb] :lol: :lol: lol :lol: Thank you. It was second in the news bulliten here behind this. The full story is in the columnn of blue in the middle... It just makes me want to hang my head and cry. Such total idiots.
It's very strange to read about this sort of thing happening in Sydney. I used to know a bloke from Cronulla, whose families’ origin was Macedonian. (We lost contact a good few years ago). His family moved to Oz just before he was born so that he and his brothers wouldn't have to do military service. Anyway, he used to tell me that there was always a lot of fighting between people of different Eastern European backgrounds, e.g. Slovenian gang against a Macedonian gang in his local area. He told me that the general public rarely knew about this sort of thing going on and the cops didn't really get involved. The riots that are going on at the moment are something else entirely!
Big enough to be mentioned...not big enough to be main headlines. I don't know about the newspaper here...we usually don't bother...but on the news I only heard it as a bulletin. To be honest there isn't much reason for it to be a major story here, if it happened in China how much would Britain hear about it...I'd say the same if not less. sad but true.
[quote:87191311df="colonesque10"]Love the sig Spikey! I'd like to think my third testicle is the brains behind the double act as that is where Men do most of their thinking after all. I think the Scotch Tape is more like the Pinky of the outfit. Scotch Tape "What are we doing tonight Testi" Testi "The same as every night Scotch, were going to take over the world....." [/quote:87191311df] No - having three just means you are destined to be a pawnbroker - for those whose culture doesn't include the standard British sign for these people, see here.
Something like this was bound to happen soon, as regrettable as it is. Gangs have been causing trouble in the area for the last 10 years or so, its just a pity that the mob chose to direct its anger against all people of muslim appearence. Actually its a pity there was a mob at all. I don't like how the media has been touting this as a "breakdown of Australian morals". Rubbish. Racism has unfortunately been a part of our culture since the first Aboriginies were killed by white settlers. What is foreign to our culture (well, from what my geography classes have told me... probably not accurate) is the thing of large gangs. Mostly people seem to wander about in small groups, or ones and twos, leaving them easy prey to the gangs. There isn't enough people to stand up to the gangs. Not that a show of force is the solution to the problem. Though I might add that the gang members seemed to be nowhere to be found during the riots, it was only the innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time that got beaten up. And some Aussies as well, because the people in the mob are idiots. Just a note, the mob wasn't composed entirely of whites either. There was people of all different races (though obviously not middle eastern) calling themselves Aussie.
There were two guys in a car that had to race away to escape the mob cos that was screaming and going to beat them up because it was thought they were Lebaese. They were Bangladeshi students... but hey when did reason enter into mob mentality...
It was on the news here last night. Needless to say it's amazingly stupid, espiecally so when the 'mobbers' aren't even native to the country. What flared it off?
The tip of the ice-burg was a couple of lifesavers getting badly beaten up by a Lebanese gang last weekend.
Some reports indicate that there has been incidents leading up to that one and that the life savers verbally geered their attackers, provoking the attack. Not that they should have been attacked but its not as clear cut as lebs beating up life savers and then the life savers buddies beating up anyone that looks wrong... A more comprehensive background (although an opinion piece) can be found here For those that don't know Sydney, Cronulla is what is locally termed "the Shire", someone who recently moved there, has described the inhabitants as like hobbits: "insular, chauvanistic (ie 'Gods own Shire') and about as willing to see the rest of the world join there community. If there was going to be a spot in Sydney where such idiocy was to occur I'm not at all surprised it happened here... People from the Shire live there for life and only venture out of the Shire on the most dire of circumstances (or to go to work)... It s a very odd place. The Lebanese gangs while annoying and sometimes criminal, they were a police problem, not a problem that was going to be solved by an arse kicking. They weren't invading the Shire, but the Shire boys were defending 'Gods own Shire' and all that rot.
[quote:53f104c50d="spiky"]... but hey when did reason enter into mob mentality...[/quote:53f104c50d] I think Pratcho said it best. "The IQ of a mob is equal to that of its stupidest member, divided by the number of people in the mob."
[quote:855dda8533="Ecksian"][quote:855dda8533="spiky"]... but hey when did reason enter into mob mentality...[/quote:855dda8533] I think Pratcho said it best. "The IQ of a mob is equal to that of its stupidest member, divided by the number of people in the mob."[/quote:855dda8533] Gee that guy's annonying, being right [b:855dda8533]and[/b:855dda8533] saying it so well every time !!! :lol: Hi all, this big fire reminds me of the explosion of the AZF factory here in Toulouse in 2001. In just the same way, everyone thought something had exploded or crashed right next door, all over the city. 32 people were killed in that explosion, but it was mid-morning, and also right next to the ring-road, it broke windows all over the city, ours moved inwards a couple of cm before exploding (and thankfully missing the cat !) and we had to spend 6 months with plexiglass panels screwed over the openings... Anyway, just to say, I know how it feels to "wake up" to that kind of thing, and yes, it is a miracle no one was killed outright, and I hope the injured will all recover and no one else will be hurt... They said this morning on French TV that the smoke may even reach all the way to spain... :shock: As for the mob riots, well, as you may know, France experienced the same-ish kind of thing only a couple of weeks ago, and yes, it is really stupid, but stupid people easily get angry, and angry people easily get stupid, so let's just hope it calms down faster than it did here and that there too no one gets hurt too badly...
[quote:d1ffc08542="spiky"]A more comprehensive background (although an opinion piece) can be found here [/quote:d1ffc08542] An interesting article, though 'Muslim Druse' was quite amusing.
Someone said at work that the reason given for the recent $.10/gallon rise in price for gasoline was the fire at the fuel depot in England. I always said it is a small world, I just never knew it was this closely connected. I sure wish people would get their heads out of their you know whats and try to fix their own problems and quit blaming everything and everyone else.
[quote:223af55898="TamyraMcG"]Someone said at work that the reason given for the recent $.10/gallon rise in price for gasoline was the fire at the fuel depot in England. I always said it is a small world, I just never knew it was this closely connected.[/quote:223af55898] I think they were lying. The depot was apparently just 5% of our total fuel resources and the prices at the pump are actually still the same (in my area at least). Good to see people squeezing extra profits out of a disaster...
perhaps not though- the places that would have to have fuel transported them might have need to charge more than usual to cover it.
[quote:7283711bb2="roisindubh211"]perhaps not though- the places that would have to have fuel transported them might have need to charge more than usual to cover it.[/quote:7283711bb2] Hardly likely - I doubt whether gas-stations in the US are being supplied by a depot in the UK! No, this sounds like another of the many facts taught at the University of "What some bloke told me down the pub*"! *or bar, if you prefer!
[quote:4624443cae="mowgli"]What about British gas stations in America, like BP?[/quote:4624443cae] All references I have seen descirbe the site as a depot - therefore storage of finished products - if it had been a refinery it might have been a different matter - but even then, given that most if not all of the big oil companies operate multinationally, it seems unlikely that fuel for the US would have been processed in the UK - pure economics suggests that anything from the North Sea oilfields would go to domestic use, and anything obtained and refined elsewhere would go straight to the end-user, without having to be stored in Britain first - if BP is operating gas-stations in the US, then it would be logical for them to be operating refineries in the US as well. Also, given that the site is a mixed storage depot, with a lot of aviation fuel and supplying both Heathrow and Luton airports, have any of the airlines - who are not usually backward at coming forward with a price increase, usually described as a special surcharge - increased their prices using this excuse?
[quote:9a891c2e0f="Pixel"]it seems unlikely that fuel for the US would have been processed in the UK - pure economics suggests that anything from the North Sea oilfields would go to domestic use, and anything obtained and refined elsewhere would go straight to the end-user, without having to be stored in Britain first - if BP is operating gas-stations in the US, then it would be logical for them to be operating refineries in the US as well. Also, given that the site is a mixed storage depot, with a lot of aviation fuel and supplying both Heathrow and Luton airports, have any of the airlines - who are not usually backward at coming forward with a price increase, usually described as a special surcharge - increased their prices using this excuse?[/quote:9a891c2e0f] It sounds unlikely, but it does happen - when refineries shut down etc - Katrina recently caused quite a few shipments to be sent scurrying over. That did (slightly) affect the fuel price in the UK. Up until a few years ago, there was an over capacity of refineries worldwide, and particularly in the US. Therefore several were shut down, and the rest had minimal cash spent on them. Oil companies are regretting this now, as prices and demand have risen, the refinery capacity isn't enough to meet the needs of the market. Bad news for everyone (well except for me, because rebuilding these places is my job!) We're currently building a terminal in Southern California which is set to receive LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) which will come, by tanker, from offshore Australia, offshore Russia and other points in between. Yay for energy efficiency!
