Britain eyes oil-storage safety

Major blast causes less damage than initially feared in central England.

LONDON
Still, no one was killed, and only two serious injuries were reported. The sooty discharge, sucked high into the atmosphere by unusual weather conditions, has yet to impact the environment. And fuel supplies have appeared remarkably untroubled given that the depot is the fifth largest in Britain and provides jet fuel for Heathrow Airport as well as gas for drivers.

“The biggest miracle about this whole disaster is that there weren’t any fatalities,” says Mike Penning, member of Parliament for Hemel Hemstead, the town nearest the Buncefield site. “The biggest impact really is on the commercial sector. The whole of my industrial estate is down. We’ve got hundreds of factories damaged.”

Christian Science Monitor