2000 AD Online Forum

just really suprised a thread on this isn't up here yet
-there were no people killed, and luckly my brother who lives in Hemel wasn't injured, and my Dad who has been staying down there hasn't either, but he's helping a family friend who's flat has been a bit busted by the explosion.

I'm in Luton, and apparently people could hear the explosion from there, but i mananaged to sleep through it  

Link: Yahoo news article

glad your bro was okay.
i just popped in here to check for boards-eye accounts.  tis pretty insane stuff. theres the MP, every inch an ex-fireman ( hurrah !) in his demenor going on about the boys being trained for such things... er, ive been trained for terrorist attacks, haz-chems, plane crashes, biological terrorist attacks, etc, but i havent a bloody clue how to fight oil tank fires on that scale.
i expect there'll be a memo & training next week.

well good luck to em. shit it'll be fecking hot.

My friend Louise lives the other side of Hemel. I was really worried until I managed to find out where the depot actually was.
But she works right next to that oil depot. If it had been any other day I don't want to think of what it would have been like.

Lobster Doug checks the news quickly before heading off to bed. 'Meh, let see what's in the news' he thinks. 'Hooooooly shit', he exclaims.

Bloody miracle no one was killed, bloody lucky it was that time of day. Must have been well scary for anyone within miles of the place. Good luck to everyone dealing with it, rather than reading about it half a day after it happened and posting silly comments (meaning me).

Ah, it takes me back to the time the Power Tower went up...

There have been some mad photos of it - looks like Mordor in this shot.

- Steve

That's one amazing shot, horrific and beautiful at the same time. oooh, the composition, contrast etc etc...

That man Getty takes a lot of photos doesn't he?

Stupid American news is leaping to rather unlikely conclusions about Al Queda all over the place... complex industrial plants do sometimes just explode without terrorists being involved you know...

...although it does come fairly hard on the heels of Ayman al-Zawahiri's tape calling for attacks on oil facilities, so it's not surprising that "rolling news" shows put the two together to get mujahideen under the bed..

"complex industrial plants do sometimes just explode without terrorists being involved you know..."

Well, that's a lot more reassuring...

I'd have Al Queda would have the sense to blow it up during commuter hour on the Monday morning.

I blame Blake's 7... they were always infiltrating oil refineries and chemical plants (well that said they were Imperial bases but I wasn?t fooled)

Thing is, if it was a terrorist attack do you think they would tell us?

um, yeah, otherwise, there'd be no point (for the terrists)

Ah, but that's what I mean.

A friend of the girlfriend lives really close and I mean really close to this. All his friends and family were trying to get hold of him all day yesterday, efforts hampered by the fact he's one of these people who refuses to have a mobile phone.

He finally appeared at 6pm. Turned out he was evacuated from his knackered house in the morning and not thinking it was such a big deal buggered off to London for the day. When he finally found out exactly what happened he called someone. Dozy pratt.

The girlf actually used one of those hotlines that the police set-up and got a phone call back from the plods once he had been 'officially' located. I reckon his house might be a write-off though

The biggest industrial blaze britain and northern europe have had to face..

"Thing is, if it was a terrorist attack do you think they would tell us?"

Paranoid minds think alike...

The last time something like this happened... curiouslyt no terrorists involved...

Link: http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/special/05/

Well it's not exactly unlikely, is it?  For my money, the only thing ruling it out at the moment is (as Gary quite rightly pointed out) that it was hardly the optimum time to do it.  That said, it would be a bit silly to totally dismiss the idea given that it happened right after the release of Ayman al-Zawahiri's tape.

It doesn't strike you as being a bit odd that nobody's claiming to be behind it?  Even if it was an accident, it'd look good on your terror C.V. wouldn't it?

ahh, but those groups that claim to be behind everything but really aren't tend to get shuned by others in the terror comunity

Yeah.  You'd obviously be a geek terrorist, Eyebrows, meekly discussing the finer points of Semtex storage with your spoddy Animal Lib friends, while the cool terrorists throw knives at you.

yeah, and striking Hemel , of all places! All that they've got there is a fake lake filled with fascist ducks!

Glad to hear your bro is ok.

I was born in Hemel but moved to Vancouver in the early 80's but I still have a lot of relatives living in Hemel around where I used to live (the Adeyfield area).

According to all the news reports, no one died from the explosion so that's very lucky!!

All that they've got there is a fake lake filled with fascist ducks!

Well, the upside of no one being killed has unfortunately been ofset by the survival of the fascist duckpond and the hideous town center. Though I bet the industrial park I used to work in (the one with the Dixons Store Group building) is pretty messed up - something which brightens my day.

Ideally Hemel hempstead would be destroyed by some kind of nuclear fireball that magically transports all in the affected zone to somewhere decent to live...

|No, seriously Art, what is it with you and ducks? Did one steal a sanswich from you when you were a wee baby or summatt?

living only 5 miles from the largest inland oil depot (picadilly in warks) and working next to one in nottingham - you can imagine how nervous people around here are.... can only think what it must be like down there.

thank the stars nobody died.

All kidding aside- what I meant was that I wouldn't be surprised to find that various groups had already claimed responsibility (even if it was an accident), but that the info was being hushed up to avoid panic around other depots.  Of course, it would be next to impossible to keep that sort of thing off the internet...

ahhh , see , my paranoia runs the other way, that if it is an accident, that'll make out its terrorists, just in time to start a war on some poverty stricken country for Christmas, not that muslim types celebrate Christmas, what better way to let them know its Christmas !  

KerBooooM !  gaddam towel heads watch us accidently blow up our own refinerys will ya ? wheeeeeeeeeeee NUKKKKKKEEE !

NUKKKKKKEEE! should be the battle-cry of a giant stompy robot.

I don't live too far from Hemel (The wonderful world of Milton Keynes), but I didn't hear nuffink, musta been asleep.

Funnily enough, there was a rumour going round MK that there was going to be a Islamist terror attack on Sunday at MK shopping centre. (Anyone who has been there will know why someone would want to blow it up, but I digress) Fortunately it was based on the ancient urban myth where a German/Irishman/Muslim drops his wallet, & then tells the good samaritan not to shop at this location on a certain date.


Milton Keynes is the land of dullards.