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.
So silly and you're falling for propaganda , the oil in the water will ....HAS harmed MILLIONS! People like you scare me, you accept lies told right in front of your face..because you want too...smh. Bet you get mad if one working person harms one other in the streets and this is the rich getting away with hurting millions. You think you were lucky ..lol????...derp! Are you a bot?
A bit like the Challenger disaster; a small amount of Aluminium slag was all that kept the Shuttle's launch vehicle from exploding on the launch pad, instead of a couple of miles up. Given how many spectators there were that day and that the entire launch pad could have been destroyed (several Soviet launch accidents illustrate this quite well), NASA got off easy via sheer luck for the size of their blunder 🤔 . (though the unlucky Shuttle crew didn't, all paying with their lives)
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 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.
IDK if you're a bloke but please be extra sure to get screened and check for lumps down there, you were breathing in a carcinogen (PFOS) that is known to cause certain testicular cancers in particular as well as bladder cancer.
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.
I used to play for Wycombe lions which was the name for the Wycombe wanderers youth team I remember playing on adams park next to Wycombe general hospital. Wycombe wanderers had an amazing slope literally like 30’ slope it was like running up a hill going down the wing and crossing from that side was almost impossible 😂we always attacked down the left so the slope helped us 😂😂😂
How does one provide a receipt for mental trauma and the feeling of not being safe in your own neighborhood? 🤔 It all comes down to a number value for these ghouls. And yet the companies could’ve saved themselves a LOT of revenue if they’d just maintained their safety equipment 🙄
@@Unownshipper Well when it comes down to paying out for insurance premiums, they aren't going to deal with mental or safety. They want to know what damages the house took and what items in the house were damaged or destroyed. Insurance companies, even in the early 2000s ran into issues of "OH I just bought this nice 100 inch 4k television that cost about 25 grand, but you have to take my word for it."
This is actually very understandable sadly. There are many if they could get away with it would claim they had the Mona Lisa hanging on a wall in their bedroom.
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.
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
@jpaulc441 I live in SW of England & I remember that earthquake v.well. I was 12yrs old & I was half asleep/just drifting off when it happened, scared the crap outta me & I genuinely thought something had crashed into our house😅
When I was living in a dorm a nearby tree was hit by lightning. Debri broke nearly all the windows in the dorm, but not mine. When I woke up the next day and made my way to the dorm lobby, I was confused why there was a strong draft. I’d slept through the entire thing.
Kids are amazing. Once, when I was about that age, a tornado passed over our house. It didn't damage the house but it uprooted a fifty-foot tree in our back yard. My dad said it sounded like a freight train was barrelling through our living room. My folks rushed into my bedroom and found me sound asleep and oblivious to the whole thing.
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.
Firefighters are definitely a special breed 😂🙈 I swear, 99% of the ones I knew were inveterate adrenaline junkies!! They moan about the engagement procedures which limit response in highly hazardous incidents, but I do feel if it wasn't for those rules, we'd lose a lot more to an often somewhat gung-ho approach?
Always got quite an admiration for Firemen; those who rush toward danger as a career. The dark side to it though is while such a job can be exciting... it also has some really horrific moments, such as the Firemen who had to attend that Tube fire in London, or the Grenfell debacle. (why anyone ever thought a Tower Block with only one stairwell & substandard fire safety measures [even for the time] was a good idea, I will never know [1970's town planners have much to answer for])
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 My dad is like that, lol. At his age and with some recent health issues he takes it easier and doesn't go to every call (he works with 2 volunteer stations still even though he's been long retired from the actual full-time job he had and another part-time one), but he still goes to big ones. He hates when he and mom have been off visiting family and he's missed a major fire or wreck, or if he's missed big ones from being sick.
@@jimtaylor294It's true. Police get most of the press and their job is definitely dangerous; but I don't think I truly appreciated firefighters until 9/11.
@@jimtaylor294However, if the block had been 'as built', everyone would have got out in plenty of time, as the stairs were concrete as was most of the building. It was the later adaptations, adding non-fireproof materials and changing the internal fire doors to doors that were not fire doors, and so on, which caused the fire to spread so fast and block people's way out.
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 thought the same thing. I used to sleep that soundly. I was in hospital once, after falling off a horse. About 3am, the nurse woke me up and asked if I was an athlete. I said not really but I was in karate. She said it took several minutes to wake me up, she took my blood pressure while I was asleep, and the bottom number was 33 (don't remember the top number), and they were all worried that I had slipped into a coma. Apparently athletes sleep like that though, that's why she asked that. I said that's just how I've always slept.
I remember sleeping through the Hurricane of 1987 while our house was collapsing around us. A Victorian chimney wiped out the side of my bedroom and I didn’t even stir up 😂
It didn't look like anything. The building disappeared. Not a crater even. Guessing the tanks holding the fuel were engineered to be weaker at the top so the pressure from an explosion would push the flames and energy up more instead of out. I'm sure there was a huge plume of smoke pushing south over grand canyon tho trying to get around the Rockies. You can go back on Google Earth to see it. Watched the vids, the explosion wasn't that big or powerful but the flames shot up really high, and they popped off one after another really quick which is why I think the tanks had a failsafe.
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.
I was really curious about the simultaneous valve and alarm failures on the tank in question - seems like equipment that would normally get tested on the regular as part of standard QA & disaster preparedness at most key haz-subs sites, at least from what I know? Was there significantly less of a culture around that kind of monitoring and crisis prep in the UK back in early 2000s...?
@anna_in_aotearoa3166 it's the UK. Everything gets done on the cheap. Probably more so now than then as we're 20 years further into 'profit before all else' and 'regulation strangles business' culture.
Most people are unaware of the goings-on around them. The system in America is to downplay the risks and to hide incidents away from the public by design, supposedly to prevent public panic but in reality it's pushed by the businesses who will not spend one cent more than they must in order to maximize their profits. They lobby the government who allow things to happen this way and to make changing this way of operating hard to do. It's considered sufficient when potential disasters are handled adequately on-site even when it's clear that something should be done to better prevent the problems as the best remedy.
If you know the remaining capacity of the tank and you know the flow rate - it's simple arithmetic to determine when it should be full. They should have known that the tank would be full at a specific time.
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.
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!
Absolutely - thinking of consequences had this incident occurred when M1 rush hour traffic was in full flow and local businesses & schools were all full is truly spine-chilling 🤯 But given the nature of the failures in question it seems that it could have happened basically anytime, oof.
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166~ yes, multiple car crashes on that part of the M1 with red-neckers attempting to record the fire and smoke plume with their camera cell-phones, I was in secondary school ~ if it had happened in one of the lessons we would have certainly been distracted by it,
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 was away in Norway, came back to my flat in Harpenden and the loft hatch was hanging down, thought I had been burgled then remembered the Blast had happened that morning. I ran a Temp controlled storage depot in Luton, Mcdonalds depot in Hemel was so badly damaged it was unsafe so they paid me a fortune to run their chilled goods out of my depot in Luton for 3 months
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.
A literal axe murderer was shot and killed by the police next door in 2015. Yard full of police cars, sirens, ambulances all that. I was sound asleep through it all.
A man literally busted in our air-conditioning unit when I was 11. He almost got in the house but my dad started yelling and he and my mom had their guns drawn so the guy backed out and ran. Slept like a baby, I did. Had no idea it even happened till i got up the next morning for school and there were cops in our living room.
what? this what happened to me, ah, picture this: back when i was a nipper of about 11, there was this bloke on the lam from the bobbies, who'd nicked a motor and thought he'd be clever by hiding behind our gaff at the crack of dawn. my old man, being the nosey type, went to suss him out, and what does he spy? only a dodgily stashed shooter. so, he rings up the rozzer, right? when they roll up and approach the motor, this geezer decides to make a run for it, but ends up getting his wheels snagged on some metal drain thingy across the street. his tires go to bits, sparks fly, and bam! his fuel tank's left wide open, goes up in flames quicker than you can say "blimey!" lucky for him, he scarpered on foot, with the bobbies hot on his trail, 'cause that motor and a tree behind it were ablaze in no time. now, here's the kicker: i slept like a log through the first bang, only waking up when the fire brigade turned up, right? i stumble bleary-eyed to the window, see the whole street resembling a flaming circus, and there's me old man, heroically evacuating the neighbors while the fire brigade's doing their bit. that motor goes kaboom twice more, each time with the fire brigade legging it just in the nick of time. when me dad finally strolls back in, he asks me, "fancy a day off school, mate?" well, you can imagine me gobsmacked face when i nod in agreement. but here's the rub: did this epic tale make it into the local rag? nah, mate. not a peep. so, there i am, with the most bonkers excuse for missing school, and no one believes a word of it! talk about a proper pickle, eh?
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.
The scale of response for an incident like this is truly mind-boggling. Can't even imagine how much it cost all-up! Thankful (& surprised) no responders were killed, esp. as it sounds like local brigade pre-planning wasn't perhaps completely 100%...? Can't help wondering too, if valves etc in one tank were shot, were any of cut-off valves preventing further flow of fuel onto site also dodgy and liable to fail? Feels like this one is a big disaster that could easily have been WAY way bigger if only a few factors had been different - inc. time of day, whew.
Yes, you are correct, foam attack should not be started until there is enough on site to fully extinguish the fire. As ex Fire Service I fully expected it to take weeks , that it was only 5-6 days was a truly, and little recognised, extraordinary feat. Better still I had just retired so didn't have to spend days there and weeks cleaning oil off the kit. I watched it on telly which was much more comfortable.
@@David-xp7sr can a fuel fire like this be attacked by air? that is does that red clay stuff they drop tons of in California every summer when the hills catch fire work on oil based fuel. Now I admit the UK probably does not have such resources easily available so just more of a curiosity.
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
Well even when an accident happens and you have to file a claim, your insurance company needs to be able to prove that, without any doubt, that the damage actually happened. Which is why asking for a receipt isn't out of the ordinary. It would be like trying to say a 150k house with blown out windows and minor roof damage was now somehow worth 1 million. Some people did try to pull that stunt too, over valuing damages.
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!❤😊
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.
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 😊
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.
@@v-town1980 'Cmon man, 'tis a perfectly servicable half-rhyme. discounting homophones and prefixes, there's like 4 fully-rhyming words in modern English to choose from
Fallout isn't just for nuclear accidents -- it means negative things that happen afterwards, such as a fallout from a messy marriage, or the fallout from a new law.
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!
Not at all. It was build in the 60's, back when there were fewer regulations and people's concerns were easier to ignore. With time, people got used to living next to the plant without major incidents, so no one was concerned that the emergency services hadn't been properly prepared for a major incident.
I worked on a COMAH site between 2001 & 2010, we had a very detailed emergency plan and we even did table top exercises with emergency services and local council to test the alarm.
I know what you mean. It seems necessary to me to start of the day with a "good" historical disaster lesson. It's 3:40 am. here, and THIS is what I chose as my first video of the day. 🙃
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Would it also not have been normal practice to have more than one independent monitoring/alarm system for overflows? Having only one seems a bit irresponsible to me. It's hardly failsafe either- if a monitor fails surely it ought to fail to a default of 'stop the fill' ?
I was working at a hazardous liquid waste plant at the time, and definitely agree. Our plant operators never solely relied on the tank level indicators when filling our big tanks - our largest held 8m litres.
@@alisonwilson9749 There were, but one system was faulty, another system was incorrectly setup and, to cap it all, the control panel for the site could only display 1 tank at a time and was, at the time, being used to monitor a different tank.
Nothing has weirded me out more than seeing a video appear on my youtube homepage about an incident in my hometown lol. My parents and grandparents woke from the explosion, but me and my brother slept through it. I remember waking up the next morning and there was a massive black cloud that didn't seem to move looming over Hemel. The schools had been closed, people were worried ash might fall from the sky. Most places you drove by had a TV crew filming for the nights news, keeping everyone updated on what had happened. Even now, I still have a clear image in my head of being in the car with my parents and brother, driving to our Nan and Grandad's to check on them since they lived nearby the fields. Through the front window of the car, against the clear blue of the sky, all you could see up ahead was this huge black cloud, unmoving, stemming up from the ground and branching into the sky. The fact it's been 19 years, next year a whole two decades since it happened, is insane.
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.
Apparently those sensors are never tested or regularly replaced either. So eventually you'll have two defective sensors.. You'd think that burning huge amounts of your primary customer ressource and facility is enough incentive to, you know, keep tabs on those sensors..
If the functionality of one sensor is ignored or not being adequately handled, that only means that the complacency will rise to meet the situation by them thinking there's no chance of failure because of redundancy if they leave it till later.
@@Thiefnuker Any sensor on something like that ought to be designed to fail 'safe', surely? If it stops working, it ought to automatically stop the fill.
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
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.
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
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.
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!
When I was delivering diesel to a Mc.Donalds site in the west country I could smell a very strong odour of ammonia; about 20 minutes later a team turned up in full hazmat gear and rectified a leak in a refrigeration plant about 30 metres away. Don't worry about the tanker driver!
The surprising thing to me is that I had no idea this ever happened. I was almost seven at the time and lived in Watford, so only about 8 miles away from Hemel Hempstead. Considering the explosion was apparently so loud and there was such a huge smoke cloud, I find it astonishing that I have absolutely no memory of it, not even seeing it in the news. 😅
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.
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.
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.
Yes, I was woken by an almost soundless thud - the pressure wave, then heard / felt the shockwave and thought my boiler had exploded. At the time, I lived in Baldock, North Herts.
I live about 20 miles away from Bunsfield and remember that night, it blew the curtains in my bedroom sky high (even though my room was facing away from the site) and then heard an incredibly slow explosion. I thought a car a couple of streets over had exploded. Then my parents stormed into my room to give me a bollocking as they thought I had woken them up making too much noise! But the next morning we could see the plumes of black smoke on the horizon.
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!!!!!
I was a telecoms engineer at the time on shift monitoring the network from our offices in Egham, Surrey (about 30 miles away). The blast was strong enough even that far away that the overhead projectors were wobbling and my following colleague, who lived near the office, said it woke him and his wife.
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!
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.
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.
@@cambridgemart2075 No, while I don't know who's sensors it where I can confirm they were not from our company. But all competitors and we try to learn from that incident because something like that can't be repeated. But it's unlikely. You have one or more gauges, there is always a safety sensor if you're close to overfilling. The gauges have loads of alarms that shut off pumps and can close valves.
@@apocalypsodarkelfthe channel is British so we get the videos at around 11am. However from what I can gather, the cast majority of subscribers are Americans, so the time difference means that the videos drop at around 6am on the east coast and in the early hours Pacific time.
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
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!
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 thought a plane had fallen out of the sky on its way to Luton Airport. I'd decided to sleep on the other side of my double bed that previous night - if I'd been sleeping on the normal side, the A3 framed picture I had on my windowsill would have smashed me in the face - I woke up because the picture had slammed face-down onto the bed next to me. My brother & his friend went for a drive, taking video of the blaze while playing The Prodigy's 'Firestarter' - I was looking to see if they had posted it on here, when I found this video. Great documentary, thank you, for making & posting it. I'm only glad that nobody was killed there, although more than 40 were injured.
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.
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 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 lived in Slough at the time, about 20 miles away. A few of my friends said it woke them up, although I slept through the whole thing. I wish I could still sleep that deeply.
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.
Wow!!! Absolutely astonishing! Unbelievable devastation. Truly a miracle, or very close to one, that no one died!!! ❤️ Thank you for another awesome video!!
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 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!
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!
My Dad was a traffic cop at the time and had just started his shift when this happened. He came home around 20 hours later after managing the media, road closures and then visiting hospital as a precautionary measure for inhalation. The explosion woke several family friends and it's pretty much now a forgotten disaster, perhaps due to the lack of death toll.
Little known fact- Total, the French oil company, owned half of it at the time. It was uninsured, because it was cheaper to just replace it than pay an enormous insurance cost.
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.
My office was flattened in the blast; our security guard survived because he was asleep in the reception area, the furthest part of our building from the blast, although he claims to have jumped from an upper floor window.
I was flying to Amsterdam from Manchester on the Sunday afternoon. This fire was so huge that when we were flying over the Humber Bridge, the smoke plume could be seen from the starboard side of the airplane.
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.
The main reason why there was no loss of life other than luck is that 11th December 2005 was a Sunday. At that time of the morning the M1 was empty - there is nothing between the nearby motorway and Buncefield, and still isn’t to this day. 24 hours later and the motorway would have been very busy and workers would have been coming to the neighbouring industrial estate. The explosion woke me up in St Albans. The whole house shook. In my sleep befuddled state I came to the obvious conclusion and shouted to my wife, ‘that damn cat has knocked the Christmas tree over’ - we had been decorating the tree the night before. I’m still teased to this day about blaming the impact of the largest peacetime explosion in the UK on an errant cat (now sadly deceased).
I live on the south side of Milton Keynes, just over 20 miles from Buncefield. The explosion, early on a Sunday morning, brought people running out of their houses in nightwear to find out what on Earth had happened. The explosion we heard was not a 'boom' in the true sense of the word. The best way I could describe it is a very loud fart, but one which literally blew the curtains open in my son's bedroom. One person I know was the station manager at Hemel station at the time. He was on his way to work when it happened and the explosion blew him clean off his bicycle. I understand that the reason it was heard over search a wide area was due to a weather phenomenon called an inversion - this, I believe, results in a layer of cold air being trapped underneath a layer of warm air and it somehow enhances both the distance a sound can travel and the quality of the sound. Back in the 1970s my family ran a garage in Slough which included a petrol forecourt. Our fuel was supplied from Buncefield by Petrofina UK.
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.
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.
We live 160 miles away and, though awake at the time, I heard the explosion and said to my partner 'that sounded like an explosion'. It had happened, of course, about twelve minutes earlier, but of course sound only travels at about 750 mph.
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.
Ahh, a fellow Hemelite! It's weird when you see Hemel in videos on TH-cam 😂
Happy you and all your kin and neighbours are here to tell the tale. It's starting to realize how significant a role luck plays in our lives.
So silly and you're falling for propaganda , the oil in the water will ....HAS harmed MILLIONS!
People like you scare me, you accept lies told right in front of your face..because you want too...smh.
Bet you get mad if one working person harms one other in the streets and this is the rich getting away with hurting millions. You think you were lucky ..lol????...derp!
Are you a bot?
A bit like the Challenger disaster; a small amount of Aluminium slag was all that kept the Shuttle's launch vehicle from exploding on the launch pad, instead of a couple of miles up.
Given how many spectators there were that day and that the entire launch pad could have been destroyed (several Soviet launch accidents illustrate this quite well), NASA got off easy via sheer luck for the size of their blunder 🤔 .
(though the unlucky Shuttle crew didn't, all paying with their lives)
How did the 4 people on site at the time of the explosion not die? I would like to know more.
"This was common practice" seems to be a great indicator of impending disaster in these type of stories...
"But it worked the last 100 times we did it! How were we to know that the 101st time would result in a massive explosion?"
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 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.
IDK if you're a bloke but please be extra sure to get screened and check for lumps down there, you were breathing in a carcinogen (PFOS) that is known to cause certain testicular cancers in particular as well as bladder cancer.
And all the cars over about two weeks were covered in a oily film and I've got COPD now. I thought a Jumbo jet had crashed outside the house.
Scary! In the video it looks like a huge volcano eruption 😲😲
@@mayday6916 luckily not too many of those in Hertfordshire.
Do you mean bungalow? Buglagow isn't a word as far as I know.
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.
I used to play for Wycombe lions which was the name for the Wycombe wanderers youth team I remember playing on adams park next to Wycombe general hospital. Wycombe wanderers had an amazing slope literally like 30’ slope it was like running up a hill going down the wing and crossing from that side was almost impossible 😂we always attacked down the left so the slope helped us 😂😂😂
@@itrurelig1on759 Loakes Park was the ground next to the hospital.
I remember the boom in high wycombe i had just got out of bed
The oil companies admitting fault then proceeding to require receipts for everything for payout is the most corporate thing ever.
How does one provide a receipt for mental trauma and the feeling of not being safe in your own neighborhood? 🤔
It all comes down to a number value for these ghouls. And yet the companies could’ve saved themselves a LOT of revenue if they’d just maintained their safety equipment 🙄
@@Unownshipper Well when it comes down to paying out for insurance premiums, they aren't going to deal with mental or safety. They want to know what damages the house took and what items in the house were damaged or destroyed. Insurance companies, even in the early 2000s ran into issues of "OH I just bought this nice 100 inch 4k television that cost about 25 grand, but you have to take my word for it."
They don't become giant corporations by giving way on things like the price of knickers.
This is actually very understandable sadly. There are many if they could get away with it would claim they had the Mona Lisa hanging on a wall in their bedroom.
mona lisa just lost her smile lol@@aj.j5833
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.
25 miles away!! Wow. I can't even imagine 😢
I feel personally victimised that you referred to 2005 as "decades" ago 😅 fantastic vid as always!
Jeez, right? 😮
I suddenly feel very old. 😂
I feel the same way when someone talks about the 70's and 80's 😅🤣😂❤
It's only when 2025 rolls around you can really say "decades" in plural.
Yes, less than 20 years is not "decades".
😂
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 was disappointed when London and SE England had an small earthquake and I didn't feel a thing because I was taking a nap...
@jpaulc441 I live in SW of England & I remember that earthquake v.well. I was 12yrs old & I was half asleep/just drifting off when it happened, scared the crap outta me & I genuinely thought something had crashed into our house😅
You watch a lot of content I do. I don’t usually recognise a name on TH-cam. I’ve seen you here, on Criminally Listed & They Will Kill You 😂
When I was living in a dorm a nearby tree was hit by lightning. Debri broke nearly all the windows in the dorm, but not mine. When I woke up the next day and made my way to the dorm lobby, I was confused why there was a strong draft. I’d slept through the entire thing.
Kids are amazing. Once, when I was about that age, a tornado passed over our house. It didn't damage the house but it uprooted a fifty-foot tree in our back yard. My dad said it sounded like a freight train was barrelling through our living room. My folks rushed into my bedroom and found me sound asleep and oblivious to the whole thing.
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.
Firefighters are definitely a special breed 😂🙈 I swear, 99% of the ones I knew were inveterate adrenaline junkies!! They moan about the engagement procedures which limit response in highly hazardous incidents, but I do feel if it wasn't for those rules, we'd lose a lot more to an often somewhat gung-ho approach?
Always got quite an admiration for Firemen; those who rush toward danger as a career.
The dark side to it though is while such a job can be exciting... it also has some really horrific moments, such as the Firemen who had to attend that Tube fire in London, or the Grenfell debacle.
(why anyone ever thought a Tower Block with only one stairwell & substandard fire safety measures [even for the time] was a good idea, I will never know [1970's town planners have much to answer for])
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 My dad is like that, lol. At his age and with some recent health issues he takes it easier and doesn't go to every call (he works with 2 volunteer stations still even though he's been long retired from the actual full-time job he had and another part-time one), but he still goes to big ones. He hates when he and mom have been off visiting family and he's missed a major fire or wreck, or if he's missed big ones from being sick.
@@jimtaylor294It's true. Police get most of the press and their job is definitely dangerous; but I don't think I truly appreciated firefighters until 9/11.
@@jimtaylor294However, if the block had been 'as built', everyone would have got out in plenty of time, as the stairs were concrete as was most of the building. It was the later adaptations, adding non-fireproof materials and changing the internal fire doors to doors that were not fire doors, and so on, which caused the fire to spread so fast and block people's way out.
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?!?!”
That kid sleeping trough the explosion is my spirit animal.
I thought the same thing. I used to sleep that soundly. I was in hospital once, after falling off a horse. About 3am, the nurse woke me up and asked if I was an athlete. I said not really but I was in karate. She said it took several minutes to wake me up, she took my blood pressure while I was asleep, and the bottom number was 33 (don't remember the top number), and they were all worried that I had slipped into a coma. Apparently athletes sleep like that though, that's why she asked that. I said that's just how I've always slept.
I remember sleeping through the Hurricane of 1987 while our house was collapsing around us. A Victorian chimney wiped out the side of my bedroom and I didn’t even stir up 😂
@@kathyjones1576.Pfff.......
When I was a kid I slept halfway through a category 3 hurricane. Now? I'm lucky to sleep through a deer farting at 100 yards.
She would have been when I was younger, but nothing beats the honey badger when you get older! 😂😂
That satellite imagery blew my mind; it makes me think about what satellite imagery looked like for the Pepcon explosion
I wonder if a satellite had happened to be recording live video if it would have seen the pressure wave from up there
It didn't look like anything. The building disappeared. Not a crater even. Guessing the tanks holding the fuel were engineered to be weaker at the top so the pressure from an explosion would push the flames and energy up more instead of out. I'm sure there was a huge plume of smoke pushing south over grand canyon tho trying to get around the Rockies. You can go back on Google Earth to see it. Watched the vids, the explosion wasn't that big or powerful but the flames shot up really high, and they popped off one after another really quick which is why I think the tanks had a failsafe.
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.
I was really curious about the simultaneous valve and alarm failures on the tank in question - seems like equipment that would normally get tested on the regular as part of standard QA & disaster preparedness at most key haz-subs sites, at least from what I know? Was there significantly less of a culture around that kind of monitoring and crisis prep in the UK back in early 2000s...?
@anna_in_aotearoa3166 it's the UK. Everything gets done on the cheap. Probably more so now than then as we're 20 years further into 'profit before all else' and 'regulation strangles business' culture.
Most people are unaware of the goings-on around them. The system in America is to downplay the risks and to hide incidents away from the public by design, supposedly to prevent public panic but in reality it's pushed by the businesses who will not spend one cent more than they must in order to maximize their profits. They lobby the government who allow things to happen this way and to make changing this way of operating hard to do. It's considered sufficient when potential disasters are handled adequately on-site even when it's clear that something should be done to better prevent the problems as the best remedy.
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166 I'd have expected at least 2 independent systems. Having no 'redundancy' in that sort of situation is ridiculous.
If you know the remaining capacity of the tank and you know the flow rate - it's simple arithmetic to determine when it should be full. They should have known that the tank would be full at a specific time.
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.
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!
Absolutely - thinking of consequences had this incident occurred when M1 rush hour traffic was in full flow and local businesses & schools were all full is truly spine-chilling 🤯 But given the nature of the failures in question it seems that it could have happened basically anytime, oof.
@@anna_in_aotearoa3166~ yes, multiple car crashes on that part of the M1 with red-neckers attempting to record the fire and smoke plume with their camera cell-phones, I was in secondary school ~ if it had happened in one of the lessons we would have certainly been distracted by it,
@@samuelfellows6923
I don't think phones had cameras on them at the time
@@trudy__taylorandjorjamummy they did but they were the old Motorola razor or Nokia type phones. But yes they still had cameras.
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 was away in Norway, came back to my flat in Harpenden and the loft hatch was hanging down, thought I had been burgled then remembered the Blast had happened that morning. I ran a Temp controlled storage depot in Luton, Mcdonalds depot in Hemel was so badly damaged it was unsafe so they paid me a fortune to run their chilled goods out of my depot in Luton for 3 months
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.
A literal axe murderer was shot and killed by the police next door in 2015. Yard full of police cars, sirens, ambulances all that. I was sound asleep through it all.
@@heikkiremes5661 you get it too lmao, and it's like "you gotta believe me, not only did it happen but I didn't wake up for all the sirens and shit"
A man literally busted in our air-conditioning unit when I was 11. He almost got in the house but my dad started yelling and he and my mom had their guns drawn so the guy backed out and ran. Slept like a baby, I did. Had no idea it even happened till i got up the next morning for school and there were cops in our living room.
what?
this what happened to me, ah, picture this: back when i was a nipper of about 11, there was this bloke on the lam from the bobbies, who'd nicked a motor and thought he'd be clever by hiding behind our gaff at the crack of dawn. my old man, being the nosey type, went to suss him out, and what does he spy? only a dodgily stashed shooter. so, he rings up the rozzer, right? when they roll up and approach the motor, this geezer decides to make a run for it, but ends up getting his wheels snagged on some metal drain thingy across the street. his tires go to bits, sparks fly, and bam! his fuel tank's left wide open, goes up in flames quicker than you can say "blimey!" lucky for him, he scarpered on foot, with the bobbies hot on his trail, 'cause that motor and a tree behind it were ablaze in no time.
now, here's the kicker: i slept like a log through the first bang, only waking up when the fire brigade turned up, right? i stumble bleary-eyed to the window, see the whole street resembling a flaming circus, and there's me old man, heroically evacuating the neighbors while the fire brigade's doing their bit. that motor goes kaboom twice more, each time with the fire brigade legging it just in the nick of time. when me dad finally strolls back in, he asks me, "fancy a day off school, mate?" well, you can imagine me gobsmacked face when i nod in agreement.
but here's the rub: did this epic tale make it into the local rag? nah, mate. not a peep. so, there i am, with the most bonkers excuse for missing school, and no one believes a word of it! talk about a proper pickle, eh?
@@hanspeter24 I want your translation put on my tombstone
Yay! A disaster video where no one was horribly killed or maimed. I knew there would be one eventually. Good video.
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.
The scale of response for an incident like this is truly mind-boggling. Can't even imagine how much it cost all-up! Thankful (& surprised) no responders were killed, esp. as it sounds like local brigade pre-planning wasn't perhaps completely 100%...?
Can't help wondering too, if valves etc in one tank were shot, were any of cut-off valves preventing further flow of fuel onto site also dodgy and liable to fail? Feels like this one is a big disaster that could easily have been WAY way bigger if only a few factors had been different - inc. time of day, whew.
I saw convoys of fire appliances driving along the A405 and M10 for days
Yes, you are correct, foam attack should not be started until there is enough on site to fully extinguish the fire.
As ex Fire Service I fully expected it to take weeks , that it was only 5-6 days was a truly, and little recognised, extraordinary feat.
Better still I had just retired so didn't have to spend days there and weeks cleaning oil off the kit.
I watched it on telly which was much more comfortable.
@@David-xp7sr can a fuel fire like this be attacked by air? that is does that red clay stuff they drop tons of in California every summer when the hills catch fire work on oil based fuel. Now I admit the UK probably does not have such resources easily available so just more of a curiosity.
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
Well even when an accident happens and you have to file a claim, your insurance company needs to be able to prove that, without any doubt, that the damage actually happened. Which is why asking for a receipt isn't out of the ordinary. It would be like trying to say a 150k house with blown out windows and minor roof damage was now somehow worth 1 million. Some people did try to pull that stunt too, over valuing damages.
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!❤😊
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.
So cool to read all the personal stories in the comments. I'm so glad no one was killed in this event. 😬
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 😊
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.
Red sky at night - Buncefield's alight. Red sky in the morning - Buncefields's still burning
Morning? Burning? Eh.
@@v-town1980 as close as I could get 🙂
The Fixx fan?
@@v-town1980 'Cmon man, 'tis a perfectly servicable half-rhyme. discounting homophones and prefixes, there's like 4 fully-rhyming words in modern English to choose from
@@v-town1980 Pedant.
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.
Fallout?
It’s petroleum, not plutonium 😂
Fallout isn't just for nuclear accidents -- it means negative things that happen afterwards, such as a fallout from a messy marriage, or the fallout from a new law.
@@LykouDanor contaminated drinking water, or air pollution…
Fallout is used as a term for the ash and fumes that come down from any smoke plume. It's just that the nuclear sort is best known.
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!
Not at all. It was build in the 60's, back when there were fewer regulations and people's concerns were easier to ignore. With time, people got used to living next to the plant without major incidents, so no one was concerned that the emergency services hadn't been properly prepared for a major incident.
I worked on a COMAH site between 2001 & 2010, we had a very detailed emergency plan and we even did table top exercises with emergency services and local council to test the alarm.
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 love how short these are, yet you still get all the information.
Love early morning Fascinating Horror uploads
I know what you mean. It seems necessary to me to start of the day with a "good" historical disaster lesson. It's 3:40 am. here, and THIS is what I chose as my first video of the day. 🙃
Seems I'm not the only one that wakes up and watches YT before work 😂
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
I totally agree I was an operator at a wastewater plant and I thought this very same thing.
Would it also not have been normal practice to have more than one independent monitoring/alarm system for overflows? Having only one seems a bit irresponsible to me. It's hardly failsafe either- if a monitor fails surely it ought to fail to a default of 'stop the fill' ?
I was working at a hazardous liquid waste plant at the time, and definitely agree. Our plant operators never solely relied on the tank level indicators when filling our big tanks - our largest held 8m litres.
@@alisonwilson9749 There were, but one system was faulty, another system was incorrectly setup and, to cap it all, the control panel for the site could only display 1 tank at a time and was, at the time, being used to monitor a different tank.
@@catalepticdru 8ml, so about 1 1/2 teaspoons?
Nothing has weirded me out more than seeing a video appear on my youtube homepage about an incident in my hometown lol.
My parents and grandparents woke from the explosion, but me and my brother slept through it. I remember waking up the next morning and there was a massive black cloud that didn't seem to move looming over Hemel. The schools had been closed, people were worried ash might fall from the sky. Most places you drove by had a TV crew filming for the nights news, keeping everyone updated on what had happened.
Even now, I still have a clear image in my head of being in the car with my parents and brother, driving to our Nan and Grandad's to check on them since they lived nearby the fields. Through the front window of the car, against the clear blue of the sky, all you could see up ahead was this huge black cloud, unmoving, stemming up from the ground and branching into the sky. The fact it's been 19 years, next year a whole two decades since it happened, is insane.
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.
Apparently those sensors are never tested or regularly replaced either. So eventually you'll have two defective sensors.. You'd think that burning huge amounts of your primary customer ressource and facility is enough incentive to, you know, keep tabs on those sensors..
If the functionality of one sensor is ignored or not being adequately handled, that only means that the complacency will rise to meet the situation by them thinking there's no chance of failure because of redundancy if they leave it till later.
@@Thiefnuker Any sensor on something like that ought to be designed to fail 'safe', surely? If it stops working, it ought to automatically stop the fill.
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
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.
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
There was a joke at the time that the explosion could be heard in Paris where the French promptly surrendered, just in case.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
😂😂😂😂
😂
LOLOL it is known
Yes! Suggested this a few times. Happened in my home town. Thanks for covering it!
I cannot thank you enough for all of the wonderful content of your videos over the years.
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.
That poor crow when the tank was overflowing was very brave.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️USA guy here, I have always loved your channel…. Thanks for the hard work
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!
When I was delivering diesel to a Mc.Donalds site in the west country I could smell a very strong odour of ammonia; about 20 minutes later a team turned up in full hazmat gear and rectified a leak in a refrigeration plant about 30 metres away. Don't worry about the tanker driver!
Yeah that's super dangerous. Seen more than a couple safety bulletins on ammonia refrigerant. Close call! @@kevinmoffatt
The surprising thing to me is that I had no idea this ever happened. I was almost seven at the time and lived in Watford, so only about 8 miles away from Hemel Hempstead. Considering the explosion was apparently so loud and there was such a huge smoke cloud, I find it astonishing that I have absolutely no memory of it, not even seeing it in the news. 😅
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 worked next door at FujiFilm!
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.
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.
Yes, I was woken by an almost soundless thud - the pressure wave, then heard / felt the shockwave and thought my boiler had exploded. At the time, I lived in Baldock, North Herts.
I live about 20 miles away from Bunsfield and remember that night, it blew the curtains in my bedroom sky high (even though my room was facing away from the site) and then heard an incredibly slow explosion. I thought a car a couple of streets over had exploded. Then my parents stormed into my room to give me a bollocking as they thought I had woken them up making too much noise!
But the next morning we could see the plumes of black smoke on the horizon.
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!!!!!
…oh wow no fatalities …amazing grace
I was a telecoms engineer at the time on shift monitoring the network from our offices in Egham, Surrey (about 30 miles away). The blast was strong enough even that far away that the overhead projectors were wobbling and my following colleague, who lived near the office, said it woke him and his wife.
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!
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.
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.
Hopefully not the company that was taken to court for their poor installation!
@@cambridgemart2075 No, while I don't know who's sensors it where I can confirm they were not from our company. But all competitors and we try to learn from that incident because something like that can't be repeated. But it's unlikely. You have one or more gauges, there is always a safety sensor if you're close to overfilling. The gauges have loads of alarms that shut off pumps and can close valves.
Thank you sir for weird upload times, anytime your ready, we are ready
11am is not too weird?
@@apocalypsodarkelfthe channel is British so we get the videos at around 11am. However from what I can gather, the cast majority of subscribers are Americans, so the time difference means that the videos drop at around 6am on the east coast and in the early hours Pacific time.
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
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!
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.)
Truly remarkable that an explosion and fire of this magnitude didn't result in a single life being lost, even indirectly.
The incident got beat out by the Ford GT over worst fuel economy on Top Gear. 😅
"That used up 60 million gallons of fuel and didn't move an inch" Jeremy Clarkson, Top Gear 27/12/2005
I thought a plane had fallen out of the sky on its way to Luton Airport. I'd decided to sleep on the other side of my double bed that previous night - if I'd been sleeping on the normal side, the A3 framed picture I had on my windowsill would have smashed me in the face - I woke up because the picture had slammed face-down onto the bed next to me. My brother & his friend went for a drive, taking video of the blaze while playing The Prodigy's 'Firestarter' - I was looking to see if they had posted it on here, when I found this video. Great documentary, thank you, for making & posting it. I'm only glad that nobody was killed there, although more than 40 were injured.
Always love these mild ones. So many channels try to only work up the horrible "man turned spraypaint" stories.
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@@james1795I assume one of those horrible incidents where a person gets obliterated, such as with jet engines.
@@crazyleyland5106 👍
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.
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 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.
Thanks for the Mark's and Spencer vs Tesco explanation for us in the U.S. 😆
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 remember this, it was a hell of a bang and I was about 20 miles away
I lived in Slough at the time, about 20 miles away. A few of my friends said it woke them up, although I slept through the whole thing. I wish I could still sleep that deeply.
@@timeladyshayde
I was awake at the time in South London, but heard nothing, and was unaware that it had happened until I heard about it on the news.
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.
Uploaded just in time for my morning coffee!
Wow!!! Absolutely astonishing! Unbelievable devastation. Truly a miracle, or very close to one, that no one died!!! ❤️ Thank you for another awesome video!!
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.
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 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!
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!
You wouldn't have seen the fire from Surrey, it wasn't visible from half that distance.
My Dad was a traffic cop at the time and had just started his shift when this happened. He came home around 20 hours later after managing the media, road closures and then visiting hospital as a precautionary measure for inhalation. The explosion woke several family friends and it's pretty much now a forgotten disaster, perhaps due to the lack of death toll.
Always like my Tuesday morning fix of FH
Drops at 8:20pm at night here in qld oz. Just after dinner, and dishes done. Perfect.
Little known fact- Total, the French oil company, owned half of it at the time. It was uninsured, because it was cheaper to just replace it than pay an enormous insurance cost.
ah yes people trying to record the accident on their phones, considering it was 2005 they must be of potato quality.
They must have been practising Emerge and see to form emergency 😢
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
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.
My office was flattened in the blast; our security guard survived because he was asleep in the reception area, the furthest part of our building from the blast, although he claims to have jumped from an upper floor window.
I was flying to Amsterdam from Manchester on the Sunday afternoon.
This fire was so huge that when we were flying over the Humber Bridge, the smoke plume could be seen from the starboard side of the airplane.
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.
How hard of a sleeper was that 5 years old daughter when she slept through an explosion. Thank god she didn't get badly hurt 🥰
The main reason why there was no loss of life other than luck is that 11th December 2005 was a Sunday. At that time of the morning the M1 was empty - there is nothing between the nearby motorway and Buncefield, and still isn’t to this day. 24 hours later and the motorway would have been very busy and workers would have been coming to the neighbouring industrial estate.
The explosion woke me up in St Albans. The whole house shook. In my sleep befuddled state I came to the obvious conclusion and shouted to my wife, ‘that damn cat has knocked the Christmas tree over’ - we had been decorating the tree the night before. I’m still teased to this day about blaming the impact of the largest peacetime explosion in the UK on an errant cat (now sadly deceased).
My Dad's career was at an oil refinery. Very dangerous work. Everything needs to be so precise.
I hope someday you have no new disasters to cover. Thank you for posting this. You have a classic way of presenting situations.
Really enjoy your stories. Muat take tons of research. Thank you
I live on the south side of Milton Keynes, just over 20 miles from Buncefield. The explosion, early on a Sunday morning, brought people running out of their houses in nightwear to find out what on Earth had happened. The explosion we heard was not a 'boom' in the true sense of the word. The best way I could describe it is a very loud fart, but one which literally blew the curtains open in my son's bedroom.
One person I know was the station manager at Hemel station at the time. He was on his way to work when it happened and the explosion blew him clean off his bicycle.
I understand that the reason it was heard over search a wide area was due to a weather phenomenon called an inversion - this, I believe, results in a layer of cold air being trapped underneath a layer of warm air and it somehow enhances both the distance a sound can travel and the quality of the sound.
Back in the 1970s my family ran a garage in Slough which included a petrol forecourt. Our fuel was supplied from Buncefield by Petrofina UK.
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.
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.
You have a great and clear voice. For me, as a non-english speaking person its great.
We live 160 miles away and, though awake at the time, I heard the explosion and said to my partner 'that sounded like an explosion'. It had happened, of course, about twelve minutes earlier, but of course sound only travels at about 750 mph.
I work in the oil industry in Australia.This disaster had a massive effect right across all levels of safety.