Oh dear, this psy-ops lot must have been breathing far too much of the fictitious cloud methinks.......... looks real enough from where i'm standing.

i live about 2 miles from the explosion and trust me it is very real and what they are saying about it is actually what happened.

The explosion should highlight the dangers of these massive depots being built in residential areas, especially when next to large petro-chemical processing plants, as well as the falllacy of any engineering structure being totally safe ( eg nuclear waste disposal sites that have to be safe and secure for millions of years ).

It is also an ideal opportunity for anti-war protestors to blockade the remaining four large UK depots thus bringing this oil-war economy to it's knees.

Does anyone reading this know anything about the consequences of this
None of the news reports say anything about the consequences for babies and young children of this.
Does anyone on Indymedia care?

The health risks fromn this are known - just search for info about petrochemical pollution. also consider that things which are not normally blowing in the air may be for a while - for instance if any of the destroyed buildings contained asbestos (i don't know the site so i have no idea if they have).

btw - all conspiracy ppl, it might just be the usual conspiracy that this modern world is no threat to health. some bigwig on the news was saying the cloud was not toxic - maybe not but i wouldn't take the dog for a walk in it.

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/buncefield/

Thats how much petrol & aviation fuel gets consumed and combusted EVERY day

The big risk this causes to children is the fact if we run short of oil then we'll just bomb the shit out of some oil rich nation until we can steal more, and for the most part that seems to consist of cluster-bombing schools and hospitals.

Oh, you mean your children ? Your lovely white, English children ? No, I couldn't care less, anything they suffer is better than what we impose on other peoples kids so tell 'em to drink their milk and get out in the fresh air and quit complaining.

I heard a CNN reporter say no terrorist group has claimed responsibility, as if that implied noone was responsible. I've yet to hear Texaco or Total claim responsibility...

Way your spouting off Danny makes it very clear that you don't have children.
You are probably not long out of short trousers, what ever .
You however remember that our kids (white english) are just as innocent as iraqie kids or any others for that matter. Lucky over privileged no doubt about it. Once they have been to school for a few years and had all the natural creative talent rattled out of them thet are just kids.
Even yer actual upper class public school brats start off this way , growing up in what is known as a civilised society is a handicap we all have to deal with.

danny are you the same one who also said 'The explosion should highlight the dangers of these massive depots being built in residential areas,'

so why are you concerned about residential areas if it is not for the residents which include babies, children, the elderly,pets etc of all colours, you idiot.

And dont you fuckin make assumptions about me and the colour of my children or if I indeed have them and yes I am concerned about ALL kids all over the world .

If we dont care about our own kids then what are we struggling for.
As I do not drive a car my need for this oil is low .
But I am concerned about the pollution.
I feel we are not being told all the truth.They keep showing yesterdays news over and over.
WAIT TIL THE CLOUD GETS TO FRANCE I BET THEY WILL BE MORE ANGRY THAN THE ENGLISH ARE

Sorry dad, I know I said 'this should serve to highlight the dangers' but really, it should only highlight it to the truly stupid. Newsflash : petrol is flammable. Living next to a fuel depot carries risk.

The question "Does anyone on Indymedia care?" is sanctimonious claptrap. If Singe themself cared they wouldn't be raising their precious little ones next to a massive fuel dump. I'm meant to care for their kids when they obviously don't ? Maybe if I'd seen Singe posting last week about the demo they were organising to get the place relocated or shutdown, or if Singe had come on here suggesting closing down the other four then I would've even tried to help. Don't you care for the people still living next to these ?

What about the people of the Oriente Region of Equador, poisoned by your previous neighbours part owners Texaco - now that is something to care about. Or the people of Burma where Total operate with only the corrupt scrutiny of martial law ? Really, if you happily live next to psychopaths and never try to reform their behaviour then you best get used to things that go bang in the night.

And since the explosion, how many children have died in Iraq in order to fill these depots with cheap fuel ? And yet I'm meant to care about theoretical health risks of one explosion to the children of a nation who inflicts far worse on others ? So the good people of Hemel Hempstead could live a privileged lifestyle (even by our national standards) using stolen natural resources that they were quite happy to have go up in smoke around them everyday anyway. It was all destined to be burnt, and you weren't protesting about that - and the smoke doesn't differentiate between children depending on whether their parents are car-owners. Sure, there'll be some extra shit in the environment, asbestos or whatever from the buildings. I feel sorry for the two people seriously injured but I believe they chose to work there.

As the police warning notices that distributed by these depots say 'Go in. Stay in. And tune in.'

CorpWatch just published its list of 'The 14 Worst Corporate Evildoers' today :

Caterpillar, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, DynCorp, Ford Motor Company, Kellogg, Brown and Root, Lockheed Martin, Monsanto, Nestle, Philip Morris International (a.k.a. The Altria Group), Pfizer, Suez-Lyonnaise Des Eaux, Wal-Mart.

Now for Chevron-Texaco to be the only oil company there - ie worse than Esso, worse than BP - gives some indication of the morality of the Buncefield operation and I hope a few residents have been stung into getting out and opposing it's rebuilding.

If the same explosion had occured at one of the four bigger depots with additional extensive petro-chemical plants then the explosion could've have triggered a true catastrophe. For instance, if a similar explosion had occured at the Grangemouth depot with such p-c plants and also an oil refinery then we really couldn't expect many survivors in that town, it'd be more like Bhopal than Buncefield. And the daily background pollution of refineries is far more serious pollution problem than faced in Hemel Hempstead.

If every road protest in the UK is successful, then some countryside will be saved from being concreted over, and the rate of increase in numbers of cars of British roads will be slowed but it would be far more effective and direct imo to target the fuel depots for these cars. A week ago here someone suggested the fusion of peak-oil and climate change as campaigns to make them more effective. The tactic of closing down the oil-refineries would not only link those two issues, it would draw peace-protestors and human-rights and indigineous-peoples campaigners too, and every anti-corporatist.

Before the Iraq invasion I travelled the country trying to persuade activists to block the depots, although I never got to Hemel Hempstead as I've never once met any activists from that area. I never got enough support for oil-blocks, i suspect as it was seen as a right-wing tactic, as employed the fuel-protestors. Well, and I'm sure I'm going to draw flak for this statement, the VAT-on-fuel protests was one of the most successful direct action campaigns ever in the UK. They forced a government u-turn in a week. It was made easy for them in that the police refused to act against them, and that wouldn't be the case for us, but it is achievable and it would have more effect on the UK than even a general strike would.

For the record, I wasn't trying to say this never happened as quite obviously it did! Or that it wasn't an accident. My post simply tried to highlight the degree of news management involved in this situation.

And BOO! to Indymedia staff for removing the usual troll comments of Concerned. A quick look at a site like Infovlad will tell you that (non-agent provocateur) fanatic mujahadeen really exist, and that they're a bunch of arseholes. The atrocities of the USA have helped to create them, which is what s/he never acknowledges...Concerned is most likely a wind-up merchant of some sort, but free speech is important.

Och, boo Hypnotised ! You ignored my only good post here, that last one in case you are in doubt. I think everyone who read your original post read it as you meant it, and there are always other posts here solely concerned with IM guidelines. And yes, fanatic mujahadeen really exist, we know because our army admitted to training them and equipping them.

Answer me this and I'll try not to bug you again, what do you think of the idea of a blockade of the remaining fuel depots ? Possible ? Justified ? Appropriate ? Worthwhile ? Or none of the above ?

Danny, your post made some great points, the fuel blockades of 2000 were indeed the only form of effective direct action since 1990 Poll Tax riots, although not for a cause (cheaper petrol) I'd support. Do remember that the cops gave indirect help to those blockaders though through their lack of force, and I can't imagine they'd do that in the scenario you posit.

Hypnotised,

It is refreshing to meet a pragmatic protestor who can steal tactics from the worst of causes and who doesn't worry ' the media will crucify you for killing pensioners if you succeed'. Yes, the police would kick the shit out of any non-establishment fuel blockade and that fact did deter enough support for the idea to be implemented. I was at a 'block' ( in actuality a small gesture Satuday demo) outside one refinery , and I have never seen higher ratio of police resources to protestors. There were only as many police visible as protestors, plus helicopter, but for miles around the laybys were full of rented transit vans full of coppers, I estimate 500 within a mile.

However, there are two ways to do it. One, in sufficent numbers, perhaps thousands per depot, to make police violence irrelevant. Or two, to use more imaginative tactics. Remember, the goal of any oil blockade would be to stop the petrol reaching the garages. This means there are ample opportunities and possible tactics for small and imaginative groups to pursue.

The pipelines feeding these depots are hundreds of miles long, they have access points every few miles, and even if you can't find one of the many maps of them then you can work out by their route and geographical constraints roughly where they are.

The tankers that take the oil from the depots are now all out-sourced and stored in separate locations, and are limited in number by market forces to roughly the number required. Following one at the start or end of a shift will show you the main tanker depot location.