Police speak to fire claim driver

The fire brigade plan to let the new blaze burn itself out

Police have interviewed a tanker driver who fears he sparked the Buncefield fuel depot fire as an investigation into the blaze gets under way.

A friend told the Sun the driver believed fuel had ignited when he flicked his engine cut-out switch after detecting a vapour leakage.

The Health and Safety Executive said that was just one line of enquiry they would be examining.

Contained fires at the depot are now being allowed to burn themselves out.

Firefighters extinguished blazes in all containers on Tuesday, but another fire later broke out in a previously undamaged tank.

The fire brigade said it was safely contained and would be allowed to burn itself out to prevent the possibility of another explosion.

Sporadic fires would break out in tanks as the foam applied by firefighters wore thin, it said.

Nearby businesses have begun to assess damage

Health and Safety Executive (HSE) manager Bob Woodward told a news conference it was too early to speculate on the cause.

The HSE said it had visited the depot in Hemel Hempstead, Herts, which is jointly owned by Total and Texaco, before Sunday's incident but found "no grave concerns".

It had issued two "notices of improvement" on the depot in the past six years.

Air monitoring

Police said recent air monitoring had not raised any areas of "significant concern".

"People can go about their business as normal unless they are in an immediate area where the smoke plume is falling to the ground or they find an increase in very strong odours of fuel, which could happen as the fires have now been extinguished," said Assistant Chief Constable Simon Parr.

Most local residents have now been able to return home but are advised to keep their doors and windows closed and to stay indoors if they do come into contact with smoke.

ACC Parr confirmed the tanker driver who believes he may have triggered the blast had already spoken to police.

"All people who were around the scene at the time of the incident have been spoken to and will be spoken to again in some detail," he said.

Meanwhile, businesses on an industrial estate close to the depot have begun assessing the damage caused by the explosion and fire.

Union row

The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has accused Hertfordshire Fire Brigade of being "woefully" prepared for Sunday's incident.

The union said the brigade was able to deal only with minor oil fires and called for a public inquiry.

Hertfordshire's fire chief Roy Wilsher dismissed the claims as "utter nonsense and... pure opportunism of the worst possible kind".

Mr Wilsher said his crews had trained at the Buncefield site six times in the last year.

"There were massed foam stocks there - 20,000 litres of foam concentrate - and our people have been trained to use the firefighter equipment alongside the oil industry firefighters," Mr Wilsher said.

In the Commons, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott paid tribute to the "bravery, the dedication and professionalism" of the emergency services involved in the Buncefield operation.

"Indeed the whole House will be amazed at the criticism made of the training and preparedness particularly while they were still fighting the fire," he said.