Hemel Hempstead Oil Depot explosion.

C

Captain Chickenpants

Regular
Surprised noone has brought this up already, it was all over the news in the UK yesterday.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4520148.stm
Apparantly it was heard in Holland and northern France (although I find this difficult to beleive).

My photos from the scene http://www.flickr.com/photos/captain_chickenpants/sets/1562532/
I was visiting a friend about a mile from the blast when it occured. So took a few snaps from his window and outside his house. Not great quality as they are done with my phone.


I now have the dubious distinction of being within 1.5 miles of the two largest explosions in the UK since the 2nd world war :)
Manchester 1996 and Hemel Hempstead 2005

CC
 
Captain Chickenpants said:
I now have the dubious distinction of being within 1.5 miles of the two largest explosions in the UK since the 2nd world war :)
Manchester 1996 and Hemel Hempstead 2005
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That's pretty remarkable. Definitely rather dubious!

I would imagine Kings got rocked by it. My folks are 20+ miles away in Aylesbury and it woke them up. They then went to Surrey to visit my grandparents and could see the smoke plume from high ground. :oops:
 
Capt CC.
A weird related item - I'm now wondering if babies/toddlers have some kind of extra sense that we lose as adults.

Our ~21 month old daughter was awake in her cot crying at about 5:55 on Sunday and we were lying in bed really wishing she'd go back to sleep. :!: Just after 6am (I guess) she said "bang" (which surprised me) and I got up thinking she'd bumped her head.

Just as I was walking to her room the house shuddered with the shockwave. I thought we'd been struck by lightning or had an earthquake.

nutball said:
I thought that the satellite images of the plume from the BBC website were quite impressive... though a rather strange shape (if you were asked to look at that image and point to where the fire was, would you choose the point marked?).
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I think it may have drifted west with a change of wind direction.
 
CaptainChickenpants said:
I now have the dubious distinction of being within 1.5 miles of the two largest explosions in the UK since the 2nd world war: Manchester 1996 and Hemel Hempstead 2005
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I'd be interested to know how these explosions compare to Piper Alpha. I remember hearing at a lecture on the accident that the explostion was just short of a short nuclear blast in terms of energy release (with both oil and gas pipelines going up).
 
mcsven said:
I'd be interested to know how these explosions compare to Piper Alpha. I remember hearing at a lecture on the accident that the explostion was just short of a short nuclear blast in terms of energy release (with both oil and gas pipelines going up).
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That would be interesting to know. I would think that Manchester would rank the lowest, simply due to the sheer volume of materials involved in the other two. The Hemel depot could apparantly store upto 60 million tons of petrol, and I imagine that an Oil rig has a pretty big store.


Simon, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

CC
 
Simon F said:
A weird related item - I'm now wondering if babies/toddlers have some kind of extra sense that we lose as adults.
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Probably just a matter of high awareness of one's surroundings. Something similar is often seen in dogs and other animals too. AFAIK, as you grow up, you gradually, subconsciously learn to filter "important" from "unimportant" input, reducing your general awareness of your surroundings as a tradeoff for an enhanced intellectual ability to process the input that you remain aware of.

Failure to do such filtering will, after a certain age, result in cognitive overload, which will prevent you from functioning normally as a human being.
 
Simon F said:
Capt CC.
A weird related item - I'm now wondering if babies/toddlers have some kind of extra sense that we lose as adults.
Click to expand...

Nope, just your little freak.

*cue music from The Exorcist*

;)
 
DemoCoder said:
I wonder how it compared to those fireworks factory explosions, or the solid rocket fuel plant explosion in the US.
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That rocket fuel plant explosion was pretty crazy looking, I assume you are talking about the one with the video and the huge shockwave rolling towards the camera right? I don't know how powerful it was though, just that it looked crazy.

I had a salt dome full of natural gas blow up about 20 miles from my house and it actually made a pretty good thump though nothing like these I am sure.
 
Captain Chickenpants said:
The Hemel depot could apparantly store upto 60 million tons of petrol, and I imagine that an Oil rig has a pretty big store.
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In the case of the Piper Alpha, there was no store per se; but the platform was connected to both an oil and gas pipeline that fed the mainland. It was this that made a bad situation worse, because the operators of the other platforms in the Piper field continued to pump oil and gas down the pipeline into the blaze for a considerable time after the explosions.

I can't find anything definite on the explosion size, but the most oft quoted number is that the incident released 1/5th of the UK's annual energy consumption (though that may not have been just the inital explosion). Either way it was a big mofo, with flames "over 100 metres in height visible from over 120 km away".
 
Simon F said:
Capt CC.
A weird related item - I'm now wondering if babies/toddlers have some kind of extra sense that we lose as adults.

Our ~21 month old daughter was awake in her cot crying at about 5:55 on Sunday and we were lying in bed really wishing she'd go back to sleep. :!: Just after 6am (I guess) she said "bang" (which surprised me) and I got up thinking she'd bumped her head.

Just as I was walking to her room the house shuddered with the shockwave. I thought we'd been struck by lightning or had an earthquake.



I think it may have drifted west with a change of wind direction.
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Well, the younger you are, the higher frequency sound you can hear. She is hearing things that we can't anymore.

I've been trying to follow this story, but strangely enough the news here doesn't cover much of it. From what I've read, no one was killed in the explosion? That's amazing if true, and hopefully the injured people recover.
 
the maddman said:
I've been trying to follow this story, but strangely enough the news here doesn't cover much of it. From what I've read, no one was killed in the explosion? That's amazing if true, and hopefully the injured people recover.
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That's right - 6am on Sunday, there wern't many people nearby. After a day there were only two people still being treated in hospital and neither of those were serious.

Given the reports I've just seen of the nearby industrial estate that's been flattened, if it had happened during a working day the deathtoll could have been in the thousands. We were so lucky to get away with no one killed it seems unbeliveable.

It's looking likely to be an accident. The sound of the explosion seems to have been a fuel-vapour explosion, and there were reports of the electical system at the plant dying just before it happened. It was also a weekend when maintenence was scheduled. Looks like a spectacular accident.
 
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros. said:
That's right - 6am on Sunday, there wern't many people nearby. After a day there were only two people still being treated in hospital and neither of those were serious.

Given the reports I've just seen of the nearby industrial estate that's been flattened, if it had happened during a working day the deathtoll could have been in the thousands. We were so lucky to get away with no one killed it seems unbeliveable.

It's looking likely to be an accident. The sound of the explosion seems to have been a fuel-vapour explosion, and there were reports of the electical system at the plant dying just before it happened. It was also a weekend when maintenence was scheduled. Looks like a spectacular accident.
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That's amazingly lucky. From the pictures I've seen, I'd say you're about right. Hopefully the fires can be put out soon, you guys don't need to be breathing the junk in the smoke.
 
the maddman said:
That's amazingly lucky. From the pictures I've seen, I'd say you're about right. Hopefully the fires can be put out soon, you guys don't need to be breathing the junk in the smoke.
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Even that hasn't materialised. They warned about the young, old, people with asthma or other breathing problems needed to be careful, but there's been no rise of people reporting with problems at hospitals. Looks like the heat of the fire has carried all the smoke up high where it's been blown away. They seem to be more concerned that they may have problems when they damp the fire down and there is less heat to push the smoke high into the air.

Also there's nothing hugely dangerous in the smoke - it's fuel in a storage facility, rather than the more poisonous chemicals used for refining that fuel if it has been a refinery that had gone up. We're not going to have a Bopahl or anything.
 
the maddman said:
Well, the younger you are, the higher frequency sound you can hear. She is hearing things that we can't anymore.
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But surely the shockwave is going to be travelling at the speed of sound? I was wondering if the associated earthquake was what she felt as that would probably travel much faster.

I've been trying to follow this story, but strangely enough the news here doesn't cover much of it. From what I've read, no one was killed in the explosion.
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That's what's been reported. Last I heard (last night's news) there was only one person still in hospital and was in a stable condtion.
 
the maddman said:
That's amazingly lucky. From the pictures I've seen, I'd say you're about right. Hopefully the fires can be put out soon, you guys don't need to be breathing the junk in the smoke.
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Ahhh ... it's probably still less harmful than the air of LA. :)
 
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