News Search Search this site or the web powered by FreeFind Site search Web search Story archive		12-12-2005 Scotsman 'I fell. When I opened my eyes there was nothing left' By Chief News Correspondent Gethin Chamberlain RAHEEL Ashraf was coming towards the end of his shift. The security guard had been up all night as usual, keeping an eye on the Fujifilm offices next to the giant Buncefield fuel depot on the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead. It was 6am, not long before dawn, and he was doing his final rounds. On the top floor of the building, he noticed fumes. "I had no idea where the smell was coming from because it was an office building and where would you smell fumes?" he said. "I popped my head outside and smelled it there too. Then it was difficult to tell if the smell was coming from inside or outside the building." A moment later, the depot exploded. "There was a humungous blast. I fell to the ground and when I opened my eyes there was nothing left of the building," he said. "It was a miracle I was standing there without a scratch." The building had been torn apart around him, leaving him stranded on the upper floor. "It was awful; it was like we were in hell. The flames were 200ft high. We could see them growing," he said. His only option was to jump 15ft on to a pile of rubble in the car park below. He landed and staggered clear. "I didn't know what was going on. I could just hear a rumbling sound. I was trying to get away from the building as quickly as possible," he said. "I was falling down on my knees in shock. I looked back from the building and nothing was left of it - it was on fire. "One moment everything is fine, the next moment, everything crumbles and you don't know what's going to happen. You hope it's a nightmare and you'll wake up." A couple of hundred yards away, tanker driver Paul Turner was picking himself up off the ground. He had just driven into the depot to start work and was walking towards the buildings when the fuel ignited. "I saw this big ball of fire come up from behind the building. It was about 50 metres wide," he said. "Then there was the loudest explosion I have ever heard. It took me off my feet. I'm not sure whether my knees buckled or whether it was the blast which took me off my feet. I was just in shock." As he was getting to his feet, Buncefield worker Terry Hine and his colleagues were running for their lives. "We were less than 500ft away, surrounded by gasoline, kerosene and diesel. I just got out," he said. "Instinct takes over. It keeps you going. The firemen were going the other way, towards it." A quarter of a mile away, in Buncefield Lane, Dominic and Sheila Gizzie had been asleep. The blast shook their house so violently that they thought the street had been hit by an earthquake. The fireplace blew out, several doors were knocked off their hinges and the garage door was wrecked. "I have never heard such a loud explosion; we did not know what it was. We have recently come back from New Zealand so we thought it might have been an earthquake," said Mrs Gizzie. The retired couple, from Glasgow, ran to their windows to see what was going on. "The flames were 100ft into the air," said Mr Gizzie. A short while later, the police turned up and told them to evacuate their house in case there was another blast, so they made their way to the nearby leisure centre at Jarmans Park, on the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead. Other residents were also gathering at the centre. Some had brought pets but few had found time to grab a change of clothes or even a toothbrush. Inside, they swapped stories about what had happened and ate the pizzas being handed around. Maureen Talbert was asleep when the blast threw her from her bed. The 65-year-old looked out of her window and saw flames shooting into the air. "Like most people, I thought a plane had crashed and everybody was running into the street to have a look," she said." Sandra, 55, and Peter Cockran, 56, said their patio doors had shattered and all their cupboards had blown out. "We are all feeling a little bit shaky still, we want to go home but we don't know how long it will take," said Mrs Cockran. Neil Spencer, 42, who lives about three-quarters of a mile from the depot, described the sight which greeted him after he stumbled out of bed. "Around 6am, as we were sleeping, there was a mighty explosion - a thunderclap that woke me up," he said. "It was fireball after fireball." At his home, also three-quarters of a mile from the blast, Paul Downer, 53, was knocked out of bed. He said he was worried about his cat. "We thought it might have been a bomb, but my son, who sleeps in the back room, said he could see smoke coming from the oil depot," he said. "He raced downstairs and got in his car to see if he could do anything to help. When he got near the depot he said the entire industrial estate surrounding it had been flattened. There was smoke everywhere and he had to turn back. "The blast took out all the windows on my patio and I have had to leave a tortoise and my 18-year-old cat in the house. She could be there for days now, he said." To cheer the evacuees up, and to give them something to do, staff handed out free cinema tickets to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But news that it might be two days before they could return home caused a ripple of unrest. "What I most fear is looting," said 27-year-old Louise Flowerday. "It's fine at the moment while the exclusion zone is in place - nobody can get in there and the police will protect my home. But when they go it will become a free-for-all. Opportunistic thieves will run riot." Back at the fuel depot, the flames showed no signs of abating. Every now and then, a fireball rose into the air, while the fire brigade waited for the arrival of the foam they needed to fight the blaze. The oily cloud of smoke drifted eastwards, towards London. As night fell, residents stepped out into the streets to watch the swirling orange flames mushrooming into the sky. At his home in High Wycombe, Mr Ashraf, the Fujifilm security guard, nursed his wounds. He had tried to get into the hospital nearest the depot but it was so busy that he went home. But his father Mohammed Ashraf, 56, packed him off to his local casualty department. "He is fine - he is covered in cuts and bruises where he jumped from the top floor, but he has gone for a check-up for the shock," he said. "He was so lucky."
		................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved.