Never thought I’d see my hometown on this channel 😂 Edit: I think the legacy of the Buncefield explosion for the town is one of luck. Yes the aftermath was awful, the significant amount of damage and the years it took to rebuild. However, if the explosion was at 9am on a Monday, instead of 6am on a Sunday, no doubt in my mind, thousands would have died. Two examples; my sister worked in a building around 500m from the initial explosion, her desk was buried under a pile of bricks. My school at the time (1km away) was a very old design, and utilised entire walls of glass throughout, all of which were blown out by the explosion. There would have been around 240 kids from ages 3-11 on site. If it was going to happen, and had to happen, I'm very thankful it happened when it did.

The oil companies admitting fault then proceeding to require receipts for everything for payout is the most corporate thing ever.

I feel personally victimised that you referred to 2005 as "decades" ago 😅 fantastic vid as always!

"This was common practice" seems to be a great indicator of impending disaster in these type of stories...

I used to live in St Albans in a bungalow with my parents with wooden doors throughout. Something woke me up and within 10 seconds every single door in the bungalow startted loudly vibrating for a good 15 seconds and multiple car alarms started going off. I put on a dressing gown and went outside and found several neighbours outside with me. Where we lived we could see down the hill the smoke in the distance coming up from the depot. Throughout the day the air was thick all around with smoke. When you breathed you could taste it and the back of your throat would have an odd dry sensation. Surreal.

Incredible how that 5 year old child managed to sleep through it all so she must really have gotten a shock when she woke up in the morning to witness what she did

I live about 30 miles away and the explosion woke me up (it was still dark); I thought our chimney had fallen down, such was the noise. Drove to High Wycombe to play football later that morning and the game was called off due to a frozen pitch. The sun would have melted the frost, but couldn't penetrate because of the black plume which rose over the Wycombe valley.

It's truly remarkable that no one was killed in such an explosion. It certainly looks apocalyptic and the fact that it was heard across the channel just adds to it. The child sleeping through it was quite funny until the house caved in, must've been terrifying.

I remember the explosion well despite living 25 miles away in a deep valley. The explosion was so loud that it not only woke me up but had me looking out the window to see if one of the construction cranes working on the new shopping centre had collapsed. Black smoke & stench of burning oil filled the air for days after.

That kid sleeping trough the explosion is my spirit animal.

I was living just up the street from Golders Green tube station in NW London at the time. I was awake and making breakfast. The entire house shook, and I thought “Oh my god, was that another tube bombing?!?!”

I worked with fire fighter who had only been retired for 3 months when this happened. I remember him being grateful nobody was hurt but devasted he missed the fire of a life time. He said he called his old watch commander begging if he could come back and help.

That satellite imagery blew my mind; it makes me think about what satellite imagery looked like for the Pepcon explosion

I lived in Hitchin when this happened. It was early on a Sunday morning and I remember hearing a deep rumble followed by a sound like the archetypal ghost wailing and the doors in my flat were rattling in their frames. I thought I had a poltergeist or something 😂 Obviously it was the shockwave from the explosion. I have done a lot of work near Hemel Hempstead around the motorway and it’s amazing how that went up when it did, it’s just across a couple of fields from the M1. If it had happened at that time on a weekday it could’ve been a lot worse!

As an AST (above ground storage tank) inspector, overfills in the US happen more than most people know. Most are contained and cleaned up without incident.

We were living just over 4.5 miles away in another town separated by open countryside. Woke up in bed to a huge bang. Our loft/attic door fell down and car alarms went off because of the boom. Went outside thinking a neighbour's house had blown up due to a gas explosion but saw nothing so ran to the next street but nothing there either. Jumped in a car with a random bloke who was also out looking and we headed out of town to the rugby club thinking it must be that. Kept driving past the club into the countryside and came to a rise where in the distance it looked like hell had opened up. It was still dark at that time so the flames were clear to see on the horizon across the fields about 4 miles away. At that point, we knew we wouldn't be able to help and just hoped no body had died.

I live 15 miles away as the crow flies, heard it that morning and could see the smoke on the horizon from my bedroom window. Didn't think I would get any updates on it before getting back from work, but once I got there I was told I had to go out to a breakdown on the A414 just south west of the place and got a front row seat for a good 2 hours.

The kid sleeping through the explosion reminds me of when I was about 11, a guy on the run from the police had stolen a car and hid from the road by parking behind our home at about 6am. My dad was suspicious, went down to investigate the man, and saw a poorly hidden gun, so he called the police. When the police showed up and approached the car, the man drove into one of the cops and tried to flee, but a car tire got stuck on a metal culvert across the street. His tire shredded, and sparks were caused - he had left the gas tank open and the tank ignited and exploded. He was lucky he had already fled on foot and the cops followed, because the entire car and a tree behind it was immediately engulfed. I slept through that first explosion but woke up when the fire department arrived, and I was VERY CONFUSED about why my dad wasnt home, looked outside, and I saw him waking up and evacuating neighbors while a car and trees were burning, and firemen were trying to contain it. It exploded two more times, with the fire team retreating safely just before each blast, and when my dad was done giving his statements and came back inside, he asked me, "Do you even wanna go to school today? No? Yeah I wouldnt either, lets stay in." Im so mad that this event never seemed to be put in local newspapers or anything. I'd scrapbook it immediately, and of course no one at school believed me the next day when I explained my absence. I truly understand the kid sleeping through the explosion, I just cant imagine being buried in rubble! Terrifying, so glad no one was hurt.

I can't believe it's been almost 20 years since this blast. The other thing I could not believe was the statement by total and Texaco that was given when residents and businesses applied for insurance claims, even though the oil companies admitted liability over the catastrophe

Due to the vast size of the fire they had to delay fighting it, it was burning for at least 24 hours if not more before the firefighters could even start. The reason being that when they started to fight it, they had to have enough foam on site to ensure it could be completely put out in one go. If they started early and did not have enough foam to get the job done there might not have been enough foam in the entire country to have a second attempt if it all reignited. So everything had to be in place before the "go" order was given, which included vast amounts of pumps and equipment from all over the country, as well as setting up networks of hoses to ensure that enough water could be provided.

When it comes to events like this, I always wonder how many deaths happened months or even years later due to the fallout. It's sobering.

Red sky at night - Buncefield's alight. Red sky in the morning - Buncefields's still burning

Extremely weird to hear local emergency services apparently didn't have clear & regularly-reviewed plans for dealing with fire at the plant (& dedicated response gear) as of 2005?? When I was with fire service here in NZ, specific ID of all major local hazardous storage locations & how to combat various levels of incident involving each site was an integral part of our response planning. Glad to hear the incident triggered legislative changes - really, really hope it also led to update of relevant emergency response planning in UK as well!

…oh wow no fatalities …amazing grace

At the time this happened, I worked for the London Ambulance Service as a dispatcher in the Central Ambulance Control in Waterloo. Both myself and the senior control officer heard/felt the explosion and said to each other "what was that...?" It was about 15 minutes before we got the call for mutual assistance from the local Ambulance Service. Was amazing to see on the TV when we got to see what had happened.

Love early morning Fascinating Horror uploads

I was living in Northwood (NW London) at the time. Woke up to what sounded like a car driving into a garage door down our road. It was only later we found out what happened. Later, we watched the huge black cloud from the Tesco car park in Watford. I understand the Guard at Joint Force HQ in Northwood was crashed at the time as they thought a bomb had gone off nearby.

I saw videos about several refineries fires caused by faulty sensors allowing overflow, as a technician it pisses me off that they can't be bothered to place redundency sensors on such critical elements. Any sensor can fail but it takes a huge ammount of bad luck or bad maintenance for TWO sensors to fail simultaneously.

Operations error. It should have been pre-anticipated/calculated roughly how much time it would take until the tank was filled to capacity at the fill flow-rate. I am an operator at a large chemical plant. I'm not saying that I'm a boss operator, but with my years on the job, the characteristics of filling a tank of that size should have been more anticipated than had happened. Especially when the fill required so many hours. Many hours to pay attention to the transfer.

Hey I noticed you have reached over 1 million subscribers! Wow!😃 Congrats man! I have been following since about 1.5 - 2 years and am not too suprised since the quality of narration and stories is top notch. You deserve it!❤😊

So cool to read all the personal stories in the comments. I'm so glad no one was killed in this event. 😬

The quality and delivery of your vids continues to impress, as does your respect for the human aspects of disaster. In a sea of vacuous bias and clickbait, your content stands as a beacon of integrity. Once again I salute you, sir.

I worked in a very similar job. Nothing gets the heart racing like walking up to a huge tank and you hear highly volatile solvent flowing out the overflow vents…..and look down and see you’re standing in 2-3” of raw solvent. Pretty sure I used up a couple of my 9 lives that day!

That poor crow when the tank was overflowing was very brave.

This was taught as a case study in my Fire&Explosions module at uni (yay Chem Eng) - I've never forgotten about the importance of a well designed bund, in particular considering fire as well as leaks! Fascinating as always, cheers 😊

I lived in Chesham at the time - it woke me up, it was like a deep rumble in the ground. After that, seeing the huge black column of smoke for days and days was quite something.

I remember it well. I was flying from Inverness Airport to Heathrow to get an international flight to Brisbane to see my brother for his 50th birthday. My flight to Heathrow was delayed by 8 hours bacause of this and I missed my international flight to Brisbane. My luggage was also separated from me. I did get to Brisbane very late minus my luggage. A few hot sweaty days wearing my bother's oversized tee shirts and shorts, my luggage turned up. A day I will never forget!

I love how short these are, yet you still get all the information.

Next time on “Would I lie to you”: David Mitchell: I was awoken by an explosion so big we thought it was an earthquake.

I remember this, was a kid living in Surrey (About 50 miles) and woke up to a low boom and a orange glow on the cealing. Sadly, I just rolled over and fell asleep again rather than taking a look!

I work in a company that sells sensors for those storage tanks, radar and servo types. This incident is used during trainings as example what can happen if a lot of things go wrong. Not sure how it was back then, but nowadays there is the emergency sensors on top as well as over or underfill alarms from our gauge. Some tanks have two different gauges on top for even more redundancy. There are hardware alarms that.get triggered when the gauge turns off, a defined level is reached or self checks fail and a lot of software alarms. For example when the data is too old. Pre-alarms are also very common to see. The measurements are also compared with manual measurements on a regular basis to ensure that there is no offset existing. I think I can confidently say that fuel storages got A LOT safer.

I used to work for a company that operated facilities similar to this. We had extensive operating procedures, one of which was that the control room was never left unattended, ever. As far as the people complaining about the company requiring some sort of documentation for property losses, this is a standard practice. As far as the mental anguish and emotional distress, this is worked out in due time. PS: For those curious, when fighting a petroleum storage tank fire, the process is to spray water on the outside of the tank to keep the steel cooled so that the tank does not rupture. You do not spray water into the tank as this will just cause the petroleum inside to rise and flow out of the tank. Foam or inert gas is used to put out the fire inside the tank. Also, I am surprised that the facility did not have separate berms around each tank. At 10:21, there is a picture of a tank where the upper half is scorched and deformed while the bottom half still has the paint intact. This is because the lower half still had petroleum in it. It is the vapors that burn, not the liquid. Not mentioned in the story was whether or not there were any fire monitors (essentially a large water nozzle on a stand) at the site. These fire monitors are used to cool the outside of the tank. Also, my experience with control rooms and instrumental control and electrical are that there are two alarm settings on tank height, a high alarm and a high-high alarm. A high alarm might be set at 95% and a high-high alarm at 98%. There are also low level alarms as well as tank gauges.

I was lying in Bed (half awake) just 18 miles away at the time. It felt like a Large Truck had gone down my residential cul-de-sac. A work colleague, (a Hemel Hemstead resident) had a rather more dramatic awakening!!!!!

The fact that the calculations showed that the tank would be full at 04 in the morning, but nobody cared to check why it still kept going till over 06 despite no warning was given is astonishing. It was also astonishing that the family with the 5-year-old daughter heard the house give way for hours before it collapsed without doing a damn thing. This goes to show how danger alertness is completely lacking in our modern societies. Everything is so routine, cushy and safe that even people who are paid for their alertness, like cops, are mentally "asleep" at the job.

The incident got beat out by the Ford GT over worst fuel economy on Top Gear. 😅

We live 10 miles away and my husband was at work and thought is was an explosion in his place of work it was so loud. I could see the plume of smoke from my bedroom window. If it had happened on a weekday my brother would have been there. It shook our house too.

The details of information you always supply in each of your videos is highly appreciated and never fails to incite an interest in finding more about every incident you cover

I remember this, it was a hell of a bang and I was about 20 miles away

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️USA guy here, I have always loved your channel…. Thanks for the hard work

I live about 15 miles from Buncefield as a crow flies - I was awake early even though it was a Sunday - being December I was looking out into the predawn gloom and my area was swathed in thick fog with a touch of frost. A fraction of a second before the main BANG - I distinctly recall a soundless overpressure similar to experiences at air shows back when supersonic booms over the crowd were part of the action. My ears popped when the percussion wave hit my house - prompting quite a lot of sharp cracks and groans but no damage. I quite suspected that a large aircraft had plummeted to earth nearby especially as the fog seemed to retain the echo for an extended period - however; after an hour with no sirens apparent, I sat with a cuppa trying to think of places that would make such a noise. Despite the distance - I hit upon Buncefield and sure enough, as the mist cleared the black pall of smoke became obvious. Mind you, the prime reason for me thinking that a disaster could occur there - was because my then son-in-law worked as a tanker driver, (not the poor taste joke it seems!) He had told me of the many spills and overfills that were such regular occurrences, they'd ceased to be taken seriously - just an annoyance involving paperwork and lost bonus. If everyone can remember that far back - it had only been a short while before that all the drivers had gone on "strike" over diesel rising to £1.43 a litre (ah, the good ole days eh?) I put the word in parentheses because it was a funny kind of strike - they all got paid for picketing the site - think it was the oil companies having a go at the government fuel tax rachet. However; this caused a massive panic at the plant because they'd had a major overfill a day or two before all the T.V. cameras arrived and the place still stank of evaporate with the bunds overflowing and 4 star in the ditches. Now here's a funny thing - you'd think people charged with looking after highly inflammable liquids would be up to it eh? Well, leaving aside the fact that they let my son-in-law drive flipping great tankers of the stuff - the guys in that "control room" couldn't actually do much controlling ( bear in mind that this is secondhand info at best but also think of the Piper Alpha rig where "controllers" who should've known better - actually pumped oil into the burning platform). Buncefield didn't control the feeding pipelines - they come from places like Croyton refinery - communications are often exasperating (allegedly!) amounts arriving were frequently too big or directed to the wrong tanks etc., etc. Guys that were supposed to monitor the gauges ( if they worked!) often stepped out for various reasons without arranging cover. As I had some experience of the London Airport tank farm operation - none of that surprised me in the least! Some posters here have already said - the poor local firemen were completely gobsmacked. They go to chip pan blazes in council flats and hose down the road after car smashes - twenty frigging great oil tanks ablaze ......... well, they frighten me! Nothing was done until trained blokes from airports arrived with special foam equipment. This by the way - floats on the burning fuel to quench it - it then floated off to pollute every ditch prompting a £mill clean up - 100,000's lrs of this stuff were being shuffled around the country for years after as no one wanted to treat it.

I was driving a truck down the M1 that morning, the bang the flash and debris falling on the road. So glad there were no casulties

I cannot thank you enough for all of the wonderful content of your videos over the years.

I can’t think of a single fire department not from a giant city that would be prepared for a giant oil fire 11:05 . Having such a massive fire under control in five hours is an impressive feat

Yes! Suggested this a few times. Happened in my home town. Thanks for covering it!

I was 17 at the time and living about 4 miles away from Buncefield and remember it like it was yesterday! The explosion woke me up briefly (although I did immediately fall asleep again not realising what had happened 😂) waking up a few hours later, the plume of smoke was indeed apocalyptic. It was so thick and an ungodly black colour and it just didn't stop! Between us and the depot was mainly fields so we were pretty lucky that only our loft hatch had blown out, but a nearby school that was between us and the explosion suffered pretty badly! Not gonna lie, I found it quite exciting and getting a few days off school was a bonus. Looking back it's really quite scary!

Another interesting and enjoyable video. Thanks! And let me just take a second to thank you sincerely for not using A.I. in your videos or thumbnails. Always nice to see a channel still putting in the effort to find actual historical content, or at least modern day photos, of the subject of the video, or even photos of similar locations, and graphics made yourself, without turning to the automated plagiarism engine.

Thanks for the Mark's and Spencer vs Tesco explanation for us in the U.S. 😆

you have the perfect voice for these documentaries, it's very calming to counter the serious nature of the content, and I appreciate the compassion and respect you show while reporting on these incidents

That was a hell of an explosion. I live and work about 80 miles away. I was getting ready to go home after a night shift at Ipswich docks, when out of nowhere, there was a dull thud, and all the windows in the gatehouse I was in rattled. Not long after, my internal telephone rang, and it was the dock control tower. The Lock master wanted to know if anyone was letting fireworks off, as he'd heard a deep bass thud, and the windows rattled. It wasn't until later, that it was realised that it was down to the explosion at Buncefield. Now that's scary.

There was a joke at the time that the explosion could be heard in Paris where the French promptly surrendered, just in case.

Uploaded just in time for my morning coffee!

Worked for Northgate at the time. Now work for an aviation publisher, and recently had a conversation about how Heathrow and Gatwick airports coped, since Buncefield had pipes supplying both with fuel.

I lived over in Buckinghamshire, so not too far from this. Remember waking up thinking a plane had crashed. Car alarms were going off and a few things fell of shelves. Could see the glowing fire across the hills!

I’m not even surprised that the insurance and claims took forever. They literally just dragged it out hoping they don’t have to fight it.

The lack of redundancy in the tank overfill sensor indicates gross incompetence in engineering design. Under no circumstance should the function of a single apparatus protect the safety of such a large scale operation. There should have been several separate overfill/shutoff sensors on each tank, and supervisory staff should never exit the control room without backup personnel being.left to monitor all operations. What a poorly designed and maintained facility.

I lived close to the industrial estate and was there at the top of the hill watching it unfold very quickly after the initial explosion. While I stood watching another large explosion occurred which was quite something to see. A walk down into the industrial estate was scary just looking at the amount of damage a good distance from the oil depot with blown in windows and doors and cladding from the big new post office building sitting the other side of the road. At work in reading the following morning the smoke had already blown over the area... 50 miles away!

I lived 35 miles to the north of the explosion at the time and was woken up by a noise unlike anything I’d ever heard, which made the windows shake in their frames. It wasn’t until I went to see a friend in St Albans that day that I saw the smoke plume. It’s one of those days I’ll never forget.

Always like my Tuesday morning fix of FH

ah yes people trying to record the accident on their phones, considering it was 2005 they must be of potato quality.

Another well done, and fascinating video. I love this channel, and I really enjoyed reading all the comments from everyone who had an experience with this incident. Also glad to not hear of a single fatality.

Your stories to me are always fascinating. Thank you so much!

My Dad's career was at an oil refinery. Very dangerous work. Everything needs to be so precise.

I was on the M4 coming back to London from Somerset that morning. I remember the moment the giant smoke cloud appeared on the horizon. I joked 'ooh that thunder cloud looks ominous' then a few moments later realised it wasn't a thunder cloud. (I then began trying to tune the car radio (which I'd never used) in to any station to find out what was happening. From the M4 in Wiltshire (about 80 miles away) it looked rather like London was experiencing another Great Fire.) Got home a couple of hours later to see the footage on tv (including the view of the smoke from space.)

I lived near Harrow on the Hill tube station near London at the time of the explosion. It woke me up. The house shook followed the sound of what I can only describe as metal scraping and crumpled up. This was not long after the 7/7 bombings in London, so I was frozen to my bed. I laid there for about 30 minutes waiting to hear sirens. But nothing. Then I doubled what I felt and heard, so I went back to sleep. When I woke up and turned in the tv, I couldn’t believe what I was watching.

Remember it well , I was on the nest with a beauty morning glory , shared it with lovely Cathy …. “Wow ! Did you feel that ?” ❤😂

I remember this....I lived 7 miles away at the time. I was fast asleep and just jumped out of bed and stood upright wondering what had happened. The shock wave blew my loft hatch off!

As I neared the end of this video, I thought that the incident was mildly horrible. Just then, you revealed the knicker disputes and I realized that this story was, indeed, fascinating horror.

Really enjoy your stories. Muat take tons of research. Thank you

I hope someday you have no new disasters to cover. Thank you for posting this. You have a classic way of presenting situations.

I remember this event quite vividly. My sister had just come home after finishing a night shift at Lava Ignite up at Jarmans Park. I remember hearing the panic in her voice just after the explosion, which was at about 6am, she initially thought that a plane had crashed near Warners End shops, so she went sprinting out the door to see if she could make sense of what had caused the explosion and huge fire out in the distance. Meanwhile, I got up and ran downstairs, only to see it was plastered all over the news and radio. BBC News claiming it was an oil depot at Buncefield that had exploded. After my mum explained to me what it was and where (I was 17 at the time and had no idea about Buncefield), the first thought that went through my head was to jump on my bike and fill up with fuel. To my surprise, everyone had the same idea. I headed for my favourite place to fill up, and that was Shell in Apsley. The queues for fuel at every petrol station in Hemel were something I never thought I'd ever see. In the end, I headed for Sainsbury's in Apsley, and because I was on a bike, I just filtered to the front of the queue of patient, angry drivers. The whole time I was doing this, I could see the flames, which seemed to be miles high. I've never seen fire that high and loud in my life. It almost felt like the end of the world; it was that scary. After filling up with fuel, I decided to see how close I could get to the flames for a couple of pictures using my potato phone. I still have these images today and a small video of the blaze taken from Leverstock Green Roundabout. After getting home, I could see the fire from my house in Chaulden, it was visible for at least 3 days with its high warm glow. Crazy and scary experience.

Always love these mild ones. So many channels try to only work up the horrible "man turned spraypaint" stories.

I remember when this happened, I was in Hatfield at the time. 5 year old me was startled awake, I still remember my metal venician blinds rattling from it. Im glad you covered this mate!

I live in Watford, Hertfordshire, a short drive from this, and remember hearing the explosion when it went off, it made such a huge bang...

Love these video's. Been watching this channel for years now. It has consistently put out video's that are reliably well done. Everything from the format to editing to scripts and visuals. I never press the like button on a video until I've watched the whole thing. But on this channel, I know I can safely press that button before it even gets started. It's that reliable. Great job!

Very much appreciate you giving both m/i units. Love your videos!

Thank you sir for weird upload times, anytime your ready, we are ready

Wow!!! Absolutely astonishing! Unbelievable devastation. Truly a miracle, or very close to one, that no one died!!! ❤️ Thank you for another awesome video!!

One of the most consistently interesting fodder, thank you.

Thanks for the great videos, always click them as soon as I see it.

Wow you did a video on something I lived through! I remember this happening! It felt like an earthquake. I'd never experienced anything like it. I was 19 at the time and living in Watford, Hertfordshire. I remember the thick black smoke in the air afterwards. Everyone's windows needed a thorough cleaning, if they hadn't been blown out that is. Our windows didn't get blown out but my friend's did. That thick black tar-like substance on the windows still lives in my head rent free to this day. We honestly thought we'd been bombed or something. It was terrifying in the first instance. I remember it taking about a week for them to put out the fire, so the air was really foul for what felt like an age. I'm so glad that nobody died in that explosion, it's a miracle that we still talk about today. If it hadn't happened in the middle of the night then this story could have had a very unhappy ending. xXx

Long time enjoyer of your channel. It's became somewhat of a ritual - every Tuesday morning, I look forward to tuning into a new video and enjoy it over coffee as I begin my day. I'd like to request that you possibly do a video about the East Palestine train derailment. Much love from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania!

Fantastic video. I was living about 10 miles from Buncefield when it exploded. We also lived close to a railway line, and my first fear was that a train had crashed; the blast sounded like a prolonged, metallic squealing, not a ‘bang’ as you might expect. I put the radio on and remember people calling in to say they were worried a plane had crashed. The smoke cloud was dreadful. How nobody was killed is nothing short of a miracle.

Truly remarkable that an explosion and fire of this magnitude didn't result in a single life being lost, even indirectly.

😱 ~ I also remember that = I also slept though the explosion & shock quake and completely obvious to it occurring, my parents didn’t mention it as we went to church; only afterwards at our fellowship meal as I said the sunshine through the windows [of our rear-hall, former chapel] looked weird and mum said that the clouds were in-fact oil-smoke, and then said about the oil storage explosion & fire in Hemel Hempstead and the chapel’s elderly care-taker [Ronald, ⚰️ ~ 2023] said that he felt the quake & heard the boom, and watched/listened to the news on TV/radio, we are in Enfield, north London. After church we watched the news on the television about it. What triggered the memory was the unique vintage central street lighting on the M1 motorway in the thumbnail ~ they have now been replaced with LED street light columns ☹️

I worked for an outsourcing company back when the Buncefield incident happened. We ended up with a shipment of fire damaged Gameboy sartridges that we had to check... get rid of the badly damaged ones, and see which ones still booted up out of the remainder. I've never had such a mind-numbingly boring task in my life.

I am shocked that there were no casualties as a result of an explosion and fire of this magnitude!

I live only half a mile from Buncefield and was already awake, preparing to go and work. I took photos of the offices immediately afterwards. An independent investigation surmised that, had it happened at 0901hrs on Monday morning there would have been over 400 casualties.

I remember this. It was all over the news for so long. I had friends that heard the explosion and the smoke was visible on the skyline for a while.

I was driving to work in Watford that morning. You could see the smoke for miles. I later found out, through my job, that the Met Police lost the back up to the Police National Computer in the explosion ( now sorted and elsewhere)…a friend, who was in the London Fire Brigade said that Hertfordshire Fire Service were tying to get Foam from other fire services to fight the fires but due to his stations proximity to Heathrow they were limited as to home much they could give in case there was a crash….I’ve recently work at the now renamed Maylands and the precautions to work at the oil depot are phenomenal …..it took the Kings Cross fire for London Underground to tighten up their processes & procedures…

Yay! A disaster video where no one was horribly killed or maimed. I knew there would be one eventually. Good video.