(Updated) BREAKING NEWS: Massive Series of Explosions rock Southern England

Sky News UK ^ | December 11, 2005

[Big Bad Bob]

Reports of up to Four Explosions at a fuel depot Near Hemel Hempstead, North West of London, according to Sky

__________________

Update:

Explosion Near London


The first picture, taken by a Sky News viewer

Map of the area

Updated: 06:41, Sunday December 11, 2005

There has been a large explosion followed by two smaller blasts in the St Albans area, around 25 miles north of London.

Sky Correspondent Sky Meade has said he can see flames about 200ft in the sky and there appears to be burning fuel.

Speaking by telephone from his home, Meade described "burning tongues" of flames in the sky.

The first blast happened at 6.03am - the other explosions followed about 20 minutes later.

Meade, a seasoned war reporter said he can see what looks like "burning aviation fuel".

"This fire is extremely intense. It is a bright orange glow on the horizon," he said.

Witnesses have told Sky News they heard the blast near Junction 8 of the M1. It is thought to be centred around Bunsfield fuel depot, near Hemel Hempstead.

The blast was felt at Sky Centre - more than 20 miles away in west London.

It was so powerful it blew out the windows at a hotel in Hemel Hempstead. There are reports of injuries there.

And one witness has told how the explosion shook his mother's house and lifted the roof.

Witnesses have told Sky News that emergency services are converging on the area.

Sky News producer Anwar Tambe heard the blast from his home in Luton and is currently stuck in traffic on the M1.

He said blasts are "going off regularly" and debris has blown onto the motorway.

More follows...

[texasbluebell]

Do you think Bin Laden is alive?

I didn't think he was still breathing, but some general or another expert was just on tv this week, saying it's thought that he is.

Can't remember who it was, but I remembered thinking -- ObL must be getting pretty good care, and living fairly well, to still be alive with that renal failure that he supposedly has.

[texasbluebell]

Watching beeb online, a police offical said, "This is possibly the largest incident of its kind in peace-time Europe."

[Sacajaweau]

Yeh....as soon as I saw it..."there's that damn "11" again".

When was the London attack?

[Danae]

DAMN

[palmer]

7/7/05

[Diddle E. Squat]

It's too early to call but an open mind is needed.

Indeed. There are literally thousands of threads in the Free Republic archives of accidents, mishaps, and lightning strikes where many posters immediately assumed terrorism, only to have 99.9% of those cases turn out to have nothing to do with terrorism.

[syriacus]

AQ threated refineries earlier in the week.

Thanks for the link to the thread, dawn53.

[no-to-illegals]

therefore I hope and pray and I believe the girls and boys are twarting more than the enemy is perpetrating.

[operation clinton cleanup]

so 6/11/06 is the next one?

[bonfire]

place marker

[MizSterious]

They sure seem anxious to label this one as "not terrorism," even before they've had a chance to investigate. Seems like a familiar pattern.

[Sacajaweau]

Not the date I'm considering but I'd consider yours as the next after what I think.

[1066AD]

Some good photos on Sky News site.

[palmer]

so 6/11/06 is the next one?

Sounds plausible. I'll put five bucks on Paris.

[Dante3]

Are you sure it's not the white supremacists from US? The other week I saw a show ("L&O" or "Missing"?) where the ones developing WMD were none other than our own white supremacists - I am not kidding. At that point, I switched channels fearing it would show Muslim extremists saving the country.

[lentulusgracchus]

Yeh....as soon as I saw it..."there's that damn "11" again".

Guys, guys.....it's too early to assume terrorism. Here in Houston, our local refineries casually redistribute large parts with depressing regularity. Some of these incidents can be quite spectacular -- about 18 months ago, a news helicopter responding to an explosion and fire (or vice versa) at a motor-oil repackaging facility was treated to the sight of rather bulky, large storage tanks the size of over-the-road tanker trailers rising like moon rockets to eye level -- and they were above 500'. They backed off pretty quickly and substituted telephoto lenses for "up close and personal".

I once woke up one morning in Lake Charles, Louisiana, 28 years ago or so, and jumped in a car to go register for college 75 miles away, and noticed that the western horizon was a solid mass of black smoke from the west to the northeast. The Cities Service refinery had caught fire (again) overnight (having blown up -- and blown up an oceangoing tanker, too -- only five or six years earlier) and was a mass of flames. It burned for days.

Osama was in college at the time, and as-yet unradicalized. Ayman Al-Zawahri was probably already a loudmouthed jerk and conspirator, but not yet an accomplished terrorist.

It was all accidental, and all to be expected, from time to time, in towns where people handle and store massive quantities of flammable liquids or fertilizers.

In the 1940's, almost the entire town of Texas City was blown away by two massive explosions caused by fires in a fertilizer-handling complex at a local wharf. The first big explosion wrecked the wharf and brought all the firemen and ambulances to the scene, and then the bulk freighter Grandcamp blew up and killed almost all of them and sent her anchors flying for hundreds of yards in one direction and her propeller in the other.

And that was when Osama was in nappies, if he was alive at all.

[MizSterious]

I saw something like that on the otherwise ok E-Ring. I was very disappointed--often the show is very patriotic and pro-military. That one was a klunker, though.

[Sacajaweau]

We know...It's kind of a balancing act. Had 9-11 not occurred, we wouldn't even notice this. It's just the way it is.

[texasbluebell]

I'd be "happy" if this was an accident.

Especially since no one died in the blasts.

But there is the little issue of the tape released earlier this week of Zawahiri calling for attacks on oil facilities or refineries, link posted by someone above. (Apparently an older warning, but re-released? Not clear on that at the moment.)

Seems a tad coincidental.

[Sacajaweau]

It was an old tape....commemmorating 4 years after 9-11. Wonder how much al jazeerza is "paid" for running THEIR news stories.