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UK firefighters still battling blaze at Hemel Hempstead

Around 150 firefighters toiling all night at a massive fuel depot fire near London were close to extinguishing the blaze, with only three of the 20 tanks still burning, police said yesterday.

"There's real optimism the fire will be extinguished today [Tuesday]" at the depot, near Hemel Hempstead, 40km northwest of London, Hertfordshire Police Assistant Chief Constable Robert Beckley said.

"It's hard to be definite on this but speaking to my colleagues in the fire service, one or two would stake their salaries that it could potentially be out by lunchtime, but I wouldn't want to hold them to that," Beckley told BBC Radio.

A spokeswoman for his department said earlier that only three of the 20 tanks that had caught fire before dawn on Sunday were still burning.

"It has been a demanding night but real progress now looks to have been made," she said.

Fire crews pulled back from the blaze briefly at one point overnight when a tank suffered a "structural failure" which was thought to pose a risk to other tanks nearby,local Chief Fire Officer Roy Wilsher said.

However, Wilsher was relieved with "better than expected" progress after having warned earlier that his crews were in "unchartered territory" as Britain and its European neighbors had never dealt with such a massive inferno before.

The job was all the harder as firefighters had to contend with swirling winds, he said.

Late on Monday, however, a police spokeswoman said: "Fire crews received aerial imagery of the site which indicated where it was safe to resume operations. This work is likely to continue overnight."

The inferno -- which left 43 people injured but, astonishingly, no fatalities -- is expected to take some 72 hours to burn itself out.

It appears to have started accidentally, although the cause remains unknown and clues as to what might have caused it were likely to be consumed in the inferno, police said.

As well as environmental concerns, fire chiefs had to wait for around 250,000 liters of foam concentrate to be sent from around the country before beginning the mammoth task of tackling the blaze.

Some 25,000 liters of water per minute were being pumped from the nearby Grand Union Canal to be mixed with the concentrate, the local fire service said.

Fears were growing over the toxic nature of the smoke cloud, estimated to be some 230km wide.

Meteorologists said that the smoke "would almost certainly go over to France when the breeze picks up". Doctors war-ned that the elderly or asthma sufferers could be affected by dust and soot particles, especially near the fire.

Witnesses who saw the first blasts described them in apoc-alyptic terms, with one likening the scene to "doomsday."

A series of explosions tore sections of walls off buildings in an industrial park, smashed windows and dented doors of homes, ripped tiles from house roofs, burned trees and incinerated at least half a dozen cars over a wide area.
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