Scene of Bunsfield blast 'like a war zone'

Imagine what it would be like if it had happened at 3pm on a Tuesday.

Deputy chief fire officer Mark Yates stands amid the carnage of the Buncefield oil terminal and it is almost impossible to imagine what would have happened if Sunday morning’s blast had occurred at peak midweek time.

In a scene more reminiscent of the Chernobyl disaster or a war zone, crushed cars lie wrecked in the car parks of abandoned office buildings totally destroyed taking the brunt of the blast.

One building, the headquarters of the Northgate payroll company, its brick façade scorched and blackened by the initial explosion just a hundred yards away, has all its windows shattered, its frontage lying in piles on the ground.

A 35,000-square-foot warehouse, only recently completed and available to rent, now appears only as a tunnel, both sides of its sheet metal form blown through by the blast.

Mr Yates is in charge of the more than 650 firefighters tackling the oil terminal blaze, which has raged since the Hertfordshire site went up in flames at the weekend.

The nearby industrial estate, the workplace of thousands in the bustling commuter town, stands scorched and partially destroyed by the impact of the blast.

“If there is anything lucky about this incident, it is that it happened at 6am on a Sunday morning,” the firefighter said. “Your estimate is as good as mine if this happened at 3pm on a Tuesday.

“We have not even had any serious injuries.”

Training manuals, company documents, town plans and even CD-roms lie among the tree branches, bricks, broken bicycles and other debris.

The only noise in the deserted industrial estate comes from a distant burglar alarm, and, in the background, the faraway roar of an inferno still blazing.

Away from the relative calm of the industrial estate, firefighters from 16 services across the UK are still battling to bring the three burning tanks of fuel back under control.

As the fires rage around them, the 60-foot-high tanks – some holding up to 18 million litres of fuel – lie crumpled like tin cans, still spewing out the pitch black smoke lingering over the town.

It is a scene almost without colour. All natural hues have been wiped out by the fierce flames.

Trees have been stripped of their bark in the blast and stand blackened against the winter sky.

“This is like a war zone,” said divisional officer Paul Bordoni, leading the battle to calm the fires in one crippled tank. “When we were here this morning, this tank was gleaming red hot.

“It has collapsed but there was no force on it other than its own weight.”

The plant’s largest tank, tank 12, is still ablaze as the separate teams of firefighters work through the smaller fires before readying to mount a full-scale “foam attack”.

The fire surrounding tank 12 is thought to have broken out of the collapsed cylinder but is still burning in the concrete bund – a man-made container built to house the fuel tanks in case of just such a disaster.

It is these bunds that have allowed firefighters to avoid polluting Hertfordshire’s water course with the run-off from the millions of gallons of foam and water used to suffocate the fires.

A dozen nine-inch pipes run more than a mile from a nearby lake up the hill into the oil terminal, the only way fire crews could get enough water to the scene.

Fifteen million litres have already been pumped in.

“This is perhaps one of the largest incidents ever dealt with in the UK and the firefighters have done a fantastic job,” said Mr Yates.

“It is a testament to the true professionalism and dedication of our firefighters.”