Hertfordshire's burning

My two major childhood fears were "bad men" [namely burglars, I think] and wolves.

My teenage fears probably involved something like never meeting Keanu Reeves so he could see what a perfect match we were and would immediately get down on one knee.

After 9/11 my immediate and all-consuming fear was world war, nuclear attacks and London being obliterated. Although this died down after a few months when it was obvious that the media was propagating the fear and shit stirring for the sake of it.

Obviously the 7/7 bombings [and I'd like to say right now how much I loathe that we've come to refer to it like that] put people back on edge again, so my heart jumped to my throat when I read these accounts on the BBC of the huge Hertfordshire oil explosion - apparently the biggest explosion in Europe in peace time [and no, no terrorists are suspected, just an awful industrial accident]:

'Nuclear explosion'
The papers are full of eyewitness accounts, dramatic pictures of the fire and stories

from people living near the depot. One told the Guardian: "Soot blew out of the chimneys. My wife looked out, saw a mushroom cloud and said there's been a nuclear explosion".
The Daily Mirror says some people thought a plane had crashed, while others believed they had been hit by an earthquake, or even an al-Qaeda bomb.

"I just thought it was the end of the world," one man tells the paper.

In the kind of political climate we live in, can you blame them for that??

People in London and Surrey heard the blast. Can you imagine? It happened at 6am on a Sunday, so casualties have been kept to a minimum, but the fire is still raging. I was on the phone to my dad just now and he played me the news down the radio.

*photos kindly nicked from the BBC site