December 11, 2005, 12.54pm • No comments (be first!) » • 1,243 Views

Picture this - oil explosion covered well in blogosphere

Interesting to see how photos are hitting Flickr from this morning’s explosion at an oil refinery in Hertfordshire, England. Some of those photos are from residents themselves, others are lifted straight of BBC News’ own photo gallery. But that’s okay; because those photos appear to have been taken by amateurs and eyewitnesses themselves (they’re all attributed).

Meanwhile, the BBC News site is running several minutes of eyewitness video footage online and on TV.

“Citizen journalists”? Yeah, why not. It may be an increasingly less fashionable tag, but this story is all about the pictures and (with no death toll so far, thankfully) would not be playing so big without the footage captured by people at the scene before pro camera crews.

It’s not all “CJ OK”, though - a search for “Hemel Hempstead” on Technorati turns up nothing at this point in time. tweak the search terms and you’ll find Gav criticising the blogosphere for its coverage of the story…

When I heard of the news at midday today about the explosion at the oil depot in Hemel Hempstead I decided a great way of getting a local viewpoint would be to use Blogmaps to find and read blogs in the surrounding area (link here).

But
not one blog in the area even mentions it. Worse, there appear to be
hardly any blogs on there at all. A link to the blogmap for my area shows about eight blogs, whereas the Brighton Bloggers list of blogs shows far more than that number.

Maybe everyone was running away from their computer at the time?

To be fair, a number of others have offered their own experiences of the explosion, which was said to be heard up to 100 miles away. Fifteen-year-old Luci Bryant from Hemel Hempstead offered her views on her MSN Spaces blog, and I think it is a tremendous insight into the way these media are starting to work together now…

This morning at 6am a huge explosion scared the hell outta me and the whole house shook. My bed literally moved across a few inches and my room lit up orange! Next thing I knew mum and dad was running round the house cheking things. Looked out my window and massive flames and black smoke. Soon realised something bad had happened and dad went out to investigate. The Buncefield Oil Depot was on fire! I was shit scared and couldnt go back to sleep. Lauren and Bear text me to check if I was ok. Thankies you two! 2 more explosions followed and car alarms was going off all over the place! It went on the news and tis still on, Hemel is the talk of the country! At least noone was badly hurt… well only 4 at the moment. Brains and Chris knocked on me door saying that the skool didnt look to damaged which sucks and then they went on about white smoke lol hehe.

Fire is still burning, maybe no skool 2moraz? Yay! xD Dad’s pictures got posted on BBC News! How kool! lol anyway makes for an interesting morning even if twas a bit scary…. actually I lie, twas very scary!

Speak to ya all soon and I hope ya all kool! Bubi xoxoxoxox

Another local teen, Becky Elizabeth, posted “>pictures and, between documenting how she found her ex-boyfriend on a dating website, another account…

I live 2 miles from the explosion in St. Albans and it was a pretty terrifying experience. The whole house shook violently, the windows have all blown in and my dad has a wound from flying glass. It was like being in an earthquake (unfortunately I have been caught up in one of those in Turkey back in 2002)..and a massive rumbling…I turned over to my best mate Boon (who always stays at mine when we have girls nights in) and swore..”fuck me what the fuck’s going on..there’s an earthquake”

This entry on The England Project at 6.10am, may lay claim to being the first account anywhere of the blasts, which police said began at 6.03am. He updated it throughout the following hours with pictures and further accounts:-

Having been up since the very start and following the MSM reports it seems to us that Sky News were well ahead of any of the other broadcasters on this. First to report it on TV, first pictures, first video and live reports from the scene. A few minutes behind The England Project but not far.

Some of this might have something to do with the number of engineers that they have across the country that install equipment in residential homes etc. Some of the early reports came directly from these engineers phoning in to the sky offices.

No reports on any early reportage from TV licensing crews across the country.

Meanwhile, other bloggers, including a former risk analysis expert in the oil and gas industry, are chewing over likely causes for the explosion. They pin it down to human error during the 6am shift changeover.

The Guardian blogged the story as early as they could this morning and asked:-

Did you hear anything? Were the CDs falling off your shelves? Perhaps you live near enough to have taken some photographs. Let us know by posting comments below. Send us your photographs by emailing Subscribe •  -->