NEWS: Explosion Heard Near Fuel Depot in Hemel Hempstead, England

I think it must be terrorism or some other type of deliberate action. I mean this is not a refinery, just a fuel depot, a storage area with only holding tanks right? I can't imagine how it would explode so violently on its own.

[edit on 12/12/2005 by djohnsto77]

You seem to have ignored the witness statement regarding the heavy fume smell in the area just before the blast. A high enough concentration of fumes in the area could even be ignited by sources outside the depot site.
I worked for 7 years in one of the buildings backing onto the depot and there were several times I can remember stepping out in the wee small hours and the air being thick with the smell of petrol. Whilst there are stringent safety regulations observed on the depot site, this does not extend beyond their boundary.

Lets see. In London there where simultaneous explosions at like 3 different locations. So that was a no brainer that it was a terrorist attack. Kind of like in NY. Two planes hit the WTC. No brainer. A storage depot blows up and they quickly come in with damage control saying it was an accident. Where is the proof? None. No proof at all. Lets see. A major fuel depot blows up that is a key supply of fuel to London and a number of airports following a relatively recent successful terrorist attack in london and a failed 2nd attempt but this isn't terrorism? Yet there is no evidence to support it being an accident.

A few months after 911 an American Airlines jet taking off from JFK on a national holiday goes down in flames. Until it was proven to be an accident there was no choice but to think it was an act of terrorism. Too many things pointed that direction. Now London has its 911 plus a 2nd attempt and now a blown up fuel supply which is consistent with whats been going on in Iraq yet without evidence its an accident? If this happened out of the blue in a place like Italy I think you could assume it was an accident of some kind. Given the location of this event the logical order would be terrorism then accident.

Why are some people so eager to see the hand of bogeymen in every bad thing that happens?

This sort of action would have had every wannabe Al Qaida affiliate from Aberdeen to St. Austell claiming responsibility, but nobody has.

I don't believe their was a rush to claim responsibility post 911. We just immediately pointed fingers. There aren't always claims of responsibility in terrorist attacks.

Keeping a healthily open mind of course, but I'm still leaning towards accident first:

Why blow up a storage depot at 0605 on a Sunday morning, when very few people are about ? OK, less chance of being spotted maybe, but that's doesn't appear to have been the way it's worked upto now.

The other thing is that is a fuel storage facility ... I'm sure that the HS was screwed down tight here, but by it's very nature, that suggests a greater risk of conflagration.

Had it been a train, or a hotel, or something less filled to the gunwales with highly volatile liquids and vapours, maybe I'd be more circumspect.

That said there is no evidence either way as I understand it, so I guess we'll wait and see.

Why? Your chances of getting close enough to the depot at that hour of the morning would be greater. You don't hit a depot to inflict casualties you hit it to cause financial loss.

BTW I was just talking to a friend of mine that stated there was an ABC news report yesterday that talks about a specific threat that was directed at the UK facilities only a week ago. Did anyone else see this video report?

Any information about those collapses? what was the cause behind them? was it the fire itself, the shockwaves?

I guess if some buildings collapsed because of the shockwaves it will contradict some of the claims made by a few around here about buildings collapsing by fires/explosions/shockwaves....

Leap Of Logic


I would like to know how the presence of heavy fumes somehow disproves a terrorist act.

Latest on this, it seems that the Fire Brigades Union have attacked the fire services for not being prepared for a fire on this scale. Personaly i think thats bad, especially when there are still guys up there putting these fires out.

I look at this in two ways. Yes i'd expect any fire service that is situated around fuel depot to have the neccessary equipment to deal with the worst scenario. They should'nt be waiting 24 hours for foam to turn up.
Then again, surely there are checks an drills and enough research done to know they could probably cope? I can't see the firemen in those surrounding fire stations just sitting thier happy and keeping quiet if they knew they would'nt have the gear to tackle a fire like that.

I know nothing about the size of these places, and certainly have'nt a clue how our depots comapare in size to the ones in the US. Does anyone know if the fire services in the US are always prepared and have the equipment ready to deal with an incident such as this? I've seen a few interesting documentaries on guys such as Red Adair, do we have companies here that do a similar job.

CX.

Ok, likely scenario (from the perspective of someone who lives there).

A security officer on duty at a building closest to the initial blast reports a very heavy smell of petrol fumes in his building just before ignition.
The weather was cold and frosty and there was not the slightest breeze.
Even a small leak on one of the petrol tanks would, over a period of time, create a very large concentrated vapour cloud without a wind to disperse it.
It could then be ignited by a source off the depot premises if the concentration of vapour in the atmosphere was large enough.

You have to look at the available information in order to form a picture of what may have happened.
This may have been an attack by the petroleum pixies, which may also be a likely scenario given the absence of proof to the contrary

Improbable Cause


My point is that the available information does not indicate a specific cause, and that consequently any conclusion at this time would be based on nothing more than supposition.

Supposition and truth are not the same thing, regardless of the source.

For every “it was an accident” theory, an equally plausible sabotage theory can be offered.

Sabotage can take the form of simply opening a valve that shouldn't be opened. It doesn't require a James-Bond-style Semtex bomb with space-age timer. All it takes is means, motive and opportunity.

Hence my skepticism regarding attempts by anyone to rationalize away the possible causes of this major catastrophe prior to the conclusion of a thorough investigation.

Doing so is, in my opinion, grossly irresponsible.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

I understand the logic that you have presented here and I agree somewhat, however, I cant agree with your final argument.

Yes London has been successfully and unsuccessfully attacked in the recent past, and we all hope that the govt, armed services and intelligence services are doing their best to prevent any future attempts. I agree that this refinery makes a somewhat tempting target so close to London, but im afraid thats where I veer away from your line of thinking.

It seems to me that any and all terrorism so far has been about getting the maximum impact in terms of media coverage by causing as much public outrage as possible. Bombs on Buses, tubes, airplanes etc are guaranteed to cause horror and are designed to create instability and mistrust in society as a whole. How has this 'terrorist attack' managed that? why detonate at six in the morning on a Sunday when you could wait till monday and get much more in the way of 'collateral damage' if all the units in the nearby industrial estate are full with their workers? And come to think of it, if you really wish to attack the British community and their economic well being, why attack the aviation fuel side of the plant ? why not attack the domestic fuel side of the plant attempting to cause the kind of panic buying that the UK saw earlier in the year?

Im afraid that I just cant see the site as worthwhile of Al Quaida's efforts as it just hasnt caused the kind of national outrage demanded of their efforts.

BTW, here's what the BBC are saying is the latest theory behind the blast
news.bbc.co.uk...

I hope i'm getting my side of the discussion over, im still hung over from an xmas party last night, much to the chagrin of my boss

The Absence Of Outrage


If it is not known to be a terrorist attack, there can be no outrage.

That is the motive for covering up terrorist attacks in a nutshell.

Is that the case here? I don't know.

The problem is that we will probably never know.

Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of opinion, but in the absence of facts, opinions mean less than they already do, which isn't much to begin with.

**News just in**

Police have today admitted that George Best was not in fact buried in Belfast last week and that in retrospect the decision to cremate him in Hemel Hempstead on Sunday morning might have been a mistake.

Sorry...

was anything further found on this? Any investigations?

I believe the investigation and enquiry is still ongoing with no official reforted findings yet published, except a few HSE reports and alerts to other such facilities.

In the meantime, over 1 year on and there are still some of the worst hit families waiting for the insurance companies to pay up for repairs. I think I'd have been out breaking the knees of the insurance company execs before now

Here's some food for thought.

www.homelandsecurityus.com...

The governments in all western societies are quick to dismiss terrorism publicly. Ten minutes after an accident the media reports "no link to terrorism" before any investigation occurs. That always annoys me, wish time was taken to thoroughly investigate causes before jumping to conclusions.

Could just be a coincidence, but it might not be and stating it was an accident before any investigation occurs is the equivilant of "playing an ostrach."

That is, we dont want it to be a terrorist incident, so we will dismiss it as an accident without looking, because we dont want to face the implications of it being true terrorism. Or at least thats the sense I get often times watching the news media. However in private I'm quite certain most governments know quite a bit more than is stated publicly, or one can hope.

Basically, this probably was an accident but to dismiss terrorism out of hand is shortsighted and against the best interest of the people.