From Tony Durham
When I lived in Harrow, north London, the Buncefield blast woke me with the sharp bang typical of a high-explosive detonation, and I commented: “That was a bomb.”
I was surprised to learn that the site in Hertfordshire was a fuel store, since the blast did not sound like an unconfined vapour explosion, which one would expect to be more of a “whumph”.
Your article on the physics of the explosion (31 March, p 44) explains a mystery that has puzzled me since that day.
Brighton, East Sussex, UK
