Page Template Last Updated: 2006/10/29 21:27
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
| Months | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jan | Feb | Mar |
| Apr | May | Jun |
| Jul | Aug | Sep |
| Oct | Nov | Dec |
[10:34] UK Oil Fire
As most of you are probably aware an oil storage terminal in Hertfordshire exploded on Sunday. Although it's a long way away from me it seems that London will be caked in non-toxic smoke sometime this evening. I'll try to stay low while I ride home tonight but I suspect it will have to fight pretty hard to make itself noticed above the normal particulate content of London "air".
Some interesting figures from the paper this afternoon:
"[The fire department] will attempt to create a "foam blanket" to put out the huge inferno using 250,000 litres of foam mixed with 25,000 litres of water per minute.The emphasis is mine. I don't know about you but that sounds like a LOT of watery foam to me. I checked it out and your average Olympic-standard swimming pool is 50 metres by 25 metres by 1.5 meters. Using the magic of mathematics I know that this equates to 1,875 cubic metres of water. I believe that 1 cubic metre is equal to 1,000 litres so an Olympic-standard pool contains 1,875,000 litres of water. So, somehow the fire brigade is going to pump out about 15% of a pool a MINUTE (that's a whole pool in about 7 minutes) to extinguish the eight burning tanks remaining (they've put out twelve of the twenty already).