   Second sunset in Hemel Hempstead not so pretty
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4517962.stmBBC News24 described this as being like a second sunset. My parents were woken up by the explosion & they're over 50 miles away in Ipswich (distance may be wrong, my geography's not great).Sky News on the other hand is doing it's usual trick of throwing phrases around like "july 7", "invasion" and "something heard in the sky beforehand". Ahh, good old Mr. Murdoch. Probably a faulty gas line rather than osama but as long as people are in the dark it's ok to try scare tactics. Rant over.   
  That must be pretty cool/scary looking all at the same time. Take pictures.   ;  I'm a couple of hundred miles away fortunately, but unfortunately for you macabre lot :P   ;  I think that this is quite a serious, however accidental, event. I doubt, and hope, it's not some sort of terrorist attack.Before I moved to South Africa I used to live near that area. Seeing as it was heard, literrally, miles away I probably would have heard it when it went off.[Edited by - Nomad010 on December 11, 2005 2:02:35 AM];  kab00m!   ;  That's a pretty nasty accident. I hope there weren't too many people who were hurt.   ;  So I take it that this isn't a small oil field. You know now that I think about it...an explosion that can wake people up from 50 miles away probably made people go deaf nearby. Sucks. :/   ;  Wow. CNN is covering it live. The close up camera is catching the fire against the smoke in a way that makes it look transparent - purple, orange, gray. The smoke plume looks like what would spew from a volcano. It reminds me of the fire at a St. Louis propane bottling company this last summer. ;  CNN just reported that the windows were blown out in buildings in Hemel Hempstead. The picture also shows a 5 story building very near the fire. And now they've announced that they will be returning to normal programming. Damn! But what should I expect? CNN is the same channel that wasted 5 hours on Michael Jackson's plane landing at the Santa Barbara airport on the same day that millions of protestors turned out in London to greet Bush.   ;Quote:Original post by DrewGreenMy parents were woken up by the explosion & they're over 50 miles away in Ipswich (distance may be wrong, my geography's not great).For the record, as I recall its around 90miles from Ipswich to London and I wasnt woken up by it, but then i'd only been asleep around an hour and a half so was probably in a deep sleep at the time.The fact it was heard in France and the Netherlands is mad [wow]