Tyneside Up in Smoke!

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Big fire in North Shields this afternoon - at a plant that recovers industrial solvents. Your intrepid Reporter has just returned with a up-to-the minute report (!).

It was actually pretty spectacular, with numerous 50 gallon drums of solvents exploding a couple of hundred of feet into the air. There is a huge plume of black smoke hovering over North Tyneside, but fortunately the wind is taking the fumes across towards mackemland (!).

Police have advised that a half mile exclusion zone has been established within which residents have been advised to evacuate - this is interesting, seeing as how I was standing not more than 100yds away. The residents were initally advised to evacuate to the N/S Library, but it was then found the Library was locked and they couldn't contact anyone with they key!!

The Metro is not running between Tynemouth and North Shields, and the Tyne Tunnel is closed. Naturally, in the immediate area traffic is grid-locked - I even had to walk there and back!

When I left the scene 10 minutes ago to get my tea, it seemed to be spreading to adjacent buildings - and checking now out my window it's still going strong, if perhaps not quite as bad as bad as it was.

This is clarky for Greenspun News at 17.45GMT ;o{)

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Answers

Feckin' 'ell clarky you get about don't ya?? If you're not strolling in the hills of Northumbria with a fine cigar and claret you're doing the work of the North Shields gazette. not a dull moment when you're around though. lol.

Fine piece of journalisim there mind

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


Clarky - see the thread below! Don't have time for more at the moment for obvious reasons, but it appears that most toxic stuff in the mix is methyl chloride. Enjoy your (hopefully methyl chloride) free tea.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Clarky - see the thread below! Don't have time for more at the moment for obvious reasons, but it appears that most toxic stuff in the mix is methyl chloride. Enjoy your (hopefully methyl chloride free) tea.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Exciting stuff, clarky !

I used to LOVE this kind of posting when we were out in the Far East. You could just picture it and feel homesick for some weird reason. Watch out for them fumes. xx

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


And here I thought the Smogs got confused thinking their semi was at SOS and were arriving early. ;-)

These chemical fires are nasty. Hope they get things under control quickly.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002



UPDATE.

Still spewing fumes but the chemical site is pretty well 'gone' at this point. 150 fire-fighters, using 30 pumps, have apparently have managed to prevent the fire spreading to several solvent storage tanks which could have made it even more interesting! However, the fire has spread to an adjacent timber yard. Timber yards and chemical plants always make "interesting" neighbours!!

One good point I should have made earlier - there don't appear to have been any personnel injuries.

I worked in the chemical industry all my life, and while I seen videos of fires involving drums of solvents that literally become incredibly dangerous missiles, this is the first time I've actually witnessed one - it didn't disappoint! I've walked past this particular plant numerous times and always felt it was a disaster waiting to happen.

Dr Bill - I heard on the radio from an H&SE guy that the solvent involved was 'methylene chloride'. If accurate, I believe this is less toxic than 'methyl chloride' - however, your information could very well be more accurate than Radio Newcastle. BBC TV News has just mentioned a previous leak of methyl chloride from the factory.

One radio report said it was a fire in the drum storage area, another said it was thermally unstable residues in recovery still that exothermed to runaway - certainly plausible.

clarky, Greenspun News, 18:35 GMT

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


Whoa! Exciting stuff........hope everyone is OK.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

I was in the house (on the net as usual, ho hum) when the girlfriend rang me from her office in the CITY CENTRE and asked if I had seen the smoke in the Wallsend area. I said I hadn't but had a look outside and sure enough a huge trail of whiteish smoke was bellowing in the sky. Living in Heaton as I do it did indeed look the smoke was coming from that area.

So being an intrepid reporter myself (your not the only one Clarky) I thought I would have a quick drive down to, ahem, Wallsend and have a look.

Needless to say I drive through Wallsend (!) and see that the smoke is actually further east but it looks very black and acrid now. I think about turning back but curiosity gets the better of me and I drive on all the way through Howdon, Meadow Well and into North Shields.

At North Shields it is chaotic. Traffic snarled up every where and on the horizon it can be seen clearly. Dense black smoke billowing rapidly behind rows of houses, people on the streets everywhere gawping at the sight, police all over the place..and then I look t the dash on my car and realise I forgot to put bliddy petrol in and it is about to run out...and I dont have any money on me. Shit!!

I look, panicing now, wanting to get out of the area sharpish but I cant, I have to keep going and go with the traffic, past the police cordons (all of North Shields seems blocked off within a mile of the blaze), praying that I dont run out of petrol and a make a bad scene worse!

All of streets are gridlocked, I'm virtually out of fuel and I just wanna go home. Sod the bliddy fire, get me out of here!

Anyway 25 mins later I'm back on the coast road on my way home and relieved to not have ran out of fuel. I make it home and fill the bugger.

The moral of the story? If your going to be a nosy bugger make sure you go prepared!

Having said that it WAS pretty spectacular to see that blaze mind....

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


I feel a heaton lads thread coming on. Andy I am born and bred in heaton, used to go to school at St theresas, lived just off heaton rd. Damn it I am homesick now.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Not from Heaton to be honest Syme, (Gateshead Boy meself) but been living here for a couple of years in a house share, alongside the railway tracks down from Heaton Library. Love the area though, good community spirit, loads of usefull shops and of course The Chilli pib down the road. On the downside Shields Road, Byker is 5 mins away.

Proobably be in Heaton for a good couple of years yet too.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002



Think that smoke has been getting to me. Make that the Chilli PUB eh? Doh!

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Heard on the radio that the fumes were drifting down as far south as Sunderland. I was intrigued. How would the Mackems notice any difference?

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Advice for Clarky and all other locals

Do as we did in The Bahamas when we had the bush fires -

get out the gas masks like if you are off to the boro

hope everything is ok

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


Got back from work very late because Metros were suspended between Wallsend and Tynemouth and started getting a stream of information from the missus. You know the drill: tired, hungry, just want to ruffle the lad's hair and have a bite to eat whilst watching some pap on the telly, nowt too testing, but instead it's "Twitter twitter twitter, blah blah blah, yaddah yaddah yaddah - you're the first adult I've seen for 12 hours and I'm going to bloody well talk your hind legs off however tired you are." I employ the masculine equivalent of noise reduction whereby everything wife-related is filtered out to a low background hum, and go about getting my dinner out of the oven. I thought I'd mention huge fire, national news, even more imporatnt than Beckham's foot, just down the road and imagined that this might have registered.

Missus: "What's it like?"

Softie: "Huge column of smoke, 30 foot flames, Metro cut off, check it out on the news."

Missus (v pissed off): "I was asking about your dinner!"

Softie (in for a penny in for a pound): "Oh, much the same..."

This report comes to you from the free male colony of the dog house. I shall be here for some time and shall be sending out a fact-finding mission to see if there are any ready-prepared meals in the house for the next few days. Emergency accomadation has already been discovered in the spare room. I count on your support Brothers!

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


I had a driving lesson and drove TOWARDS the smoke.

I took a quick picture with that lovely £100 Kodak camera of mine :) and I've posted it below. (It's shrunk down quite a bit to save the download time, but I'll put the full size one up if you want)

BTW, the picture is of the cloud of smoke from Whitley Bay, nicely circled in black.



-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002



In a few moments Paul I am going to place my hand on the keyboard and say "Stop!" I want you to close all windows and disconnect from the internet safely....:-D

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

If anyone wants the full picture (about 400k) it's here:

BIG CLOUDS!!

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


Softie that was brilliant.......great comeback mind. RAOTFLMAO. Paul that's a canny picture that mind, wayyyyyyyyyy too much time on yer hands if yer deein that kinda stuff. Seems like a nice apart from the chemical fallout bit.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Oops ignore that link, done it all wrong:

THIS ONE IS THE REAL CLOUD

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


Syme, I was waiting for my instructor to arrive, but he was a bit late and I got a call saying look at the big clouds, so I did and took a picture. So it's not my fault I've got time on my hands :)

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Not full quality btw as it would be a huge file.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Softie that conversation is great.

I assume she hung up after that last line otherwise you would have continued? :)

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002


Who drew the big black line over the clouds, spoilt a lovely picture that did.

-- Anonymous, April 12, 2002

Once worked for a pharmaceutical comp in deepest darkest Dagenham where they had constructed a new part of the plant for production of tablets. Some of their brands required the pills to be prepared under pressure so they constructed specialised large mixing vats. One of the builders took great delight in explaining that these vats had been placed in shafts which if the vat exploded would expell all the pressure (& debris) straight up and out of the roof instead of horizontally and therefore not endangering people. Often wondered if they had considered what happened when all the metal,concrete etc fell back to earth and onto the surrounding housing estate ....

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2002

What I found incredible was that they closed the tunnel because of the fumes, how could they tell?

That place really anoys me, they spend a fortune on unnecessary maintenance so they can justify the extortionate prices, one of the projects was the massive fans designed to expel fumes which cannot work unless there is clean air to replace it. Being sited next to a huge Sewage Treatment Works I'd be surprised if there was ever clean air in abundance there.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2002


Eeeh, isn't working in public health wonderful?

When the foot and mouth epidemic was raging and hundreds of thousands of animal caracasses had to be disposed of before they rotted nasty bugs into the water supplies, I regularly got shouted at and heckled at public meetings for talking about toxic risks of less than one in a million. When there's a solvent fire with risks maybe an order of magnitude or two higher and people are advised to stay away and close their doors and windows, you can't get shifted on the streets for rubberneckers! Of course I make an honourable exception for the reporters and photographers of Greenspun News, but the rest of them, sheesh ;-)).

Fortunately, it appears that there were only a few cases of anphylactic reactions and skin damage (some of them across the river). The smoke was easily visible from Durham, which was actually reassuring - the heat of the fire was sufficient to carry most of the the plume high up away from people, and by the time it came down it was too dispersed to be a problem. Still don't know exactly what was in it, but did potentially include methyl chloride, Clarky.

Anyway, all over bar the enquiry, but it made an, er, interesting evening.

-- Anonymous, April 13, 2002


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