Massive explosions at Hemel Hempstead fuel depot

Sky have gone into 5th gear....Jeremy Thompson is anchoring live from the scene.

Chris Eakin is also partly anchoring live with what sound's like Tim Wicox in London.

When was the last "National" update on One?

Incredible to see how far the smoke is spreading too. But I suppose with one tank holding up to 3 million gallons, it's not surprising!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/pop_ups/05/in_pictures_buncefield_fuel_depot_blast/img/1.jpg

I think the news channels have got a litle over excited over this one. Once it was clear it was not terrorism and nobody had died I think they should have returned to normal. Broken News parodied this sort of reaction only last week.

From the roof of the London Television Centre:
http://www.dolben.demon.co.uk/newschannel/051211_rooftop.jpg

Yes, the smoke is quite heavily overpassing my house now (South Central London), but I was not awoken this morning, as others have suggested that most people in London were.

Interesting clip on the BBC news player report of Colin Campbell doing a live report from Central London as the first explosion happened

So the bigges explosion in a decade doesn't warrent this reaction? This is big news and make no mistake about that. Some of the amazing pictures coming out (particually from the BBC Helicopter, before it need to refuel...) showed the awesome scale of the incident.

The diffrence being that in Broken News it was an incident that didn't actually happen (a missing plane that turned out not to be)... but this has happened.

It has huge news value, both in terms of the area that it is affecting, the rareity of the event and the excellent pictures of the fire and smoke

Interesting point from someone being interviewed on Sky, who said it's possible for Oilly deposits from smoke landing on power cables and knocking out power supplies.

Quite strange, though the London Bombing coverage was complete with DOG and ticker, but usually with ITV News specials you get more the feeling of the ITV1 bulletin being smiulcast on the ITV News Channel, rather than the other way round. Doesn't matter too much with the same studio/graphics, but I've never liked the News 24 simulcasts.

Anyone know what the ITV News Channel did between 6-7am - did they break into the repeated editions of the Morning News?

Also, have Five done anything?

Yes, after the first repeat of the Morning News Sian Jones appeared live at 6.30 to break the news.