No Danger

Did you ever get the feeling that you got trapped in the middle of a Stephen King novel?

His books always start with quite ordinary situations, ordinary people going about their business, doing the things they usually do. Working in shops, bars, restaurants, schools and offices. In short, everything in his books is always so much like ordinary everyday life that anything scary which happens later is made all the more scarier because of that.

Last week an enormous chemical plant blew up at about fifteen miles from where I live. It started at about 2.30pm and I didn’t get to know about it until a friend of mine called me to ask if I was all right. It seemed the fire was totally out of control by then and explosions were seen and heard in rapid succession.

Fifteen miles is too far away to hear explosions from where I live, so I ran upstairs and from there I was able to see the fire from the spare room window. The sky was tinged orange and every time there was new explosion I could see the flare going up in the sky.

Back down again to switch on the telly and sure enough, live reports were being broadcast. They were telling us to keep doors and windows closed and to remain calm and keep watching the broadcast. The wind was in my direction, so at that time nobody knew more than that a big black billowing toxic cloud was heading my way and of course the way of the whole city of Dordrecht with its nearly 120,000 inhabitants. But, the presenter told us reassuringly, there is no need to worry, because there is no toxic material in the air.

Chemical plant? Big black clouds? Fire out of control and the wind in my direction and no danger? Yeah, right! Of course there was every reason to worry. Not because of the fire, because there is a very wide river between Dordrecht and Moerdijk where the fire was raging, but nobody seemed to know exactly what chemicals were stored in the plant, so obviously nobody knew what chemical reactions would be triggered in a fire.

I briefly considered getting into the car and driving away, but where could I go? South was out of the question, because that’s where the fire was, besides, by that time there was an enormous backlog of traffic because they had more or less closed down the motorway in that direction. North then? But no, that was where the cloud was headed and according to the news reports nobody had any idea how far and how wide it would spread. I could go east, but I don’t know many people there I could go to with the cat, which I obviously would have to take as well. Under no circumstances was I going to leave him behind. So I decided to stay until I knew more.

In the course of the evening the situation became worse. There was even talk of evacuation, but on the island where I live, they won’t start that until it’s absolutely necessary. I sincerely doubt if they could actually evacuate all the people off the island in case of a calamity, because there are only three motorways leading off it. Two across large bridges and one through a tunnel. There is a fourth route across a smaller and older bridge and there are a few small ferries, but nothing big enough to get thousands of people out at the same time. I decided ‘they who are in command’ were trying desperately to avoid people from panicking and were silently keeping their fingers crossed and hoping that things would not become as bad as could be feared.

Round about midnight the fire brigade started putting a foam blanket over the fire to get it under control and this caused more toxic clouds but considering the weather conditions it was the only thing they could do.

By then there was a decidedly nasty smell which could distinctly be noticed even with all the doors and windows closed, but all the roads from and to the island had by this time been closed down. People on Twitter were sending out the strangest messages, so I stayed up and watched the reports going on on the television, keeping my fingers crossed that at least a few people knew what they were doing.

They got it out. After a few hours most of the danger was over. It took the fire brigade until well into the next morning to extinguish everything completely, but by that time there were no new black clouds. I finally went to bed at about 3am, when the worst of the nasty smell was gone.

What we all breathed in that night remains a guess. The reports from ‘those in charge’ remained very evasive and we all have to believe there was never any danger at all. I guess we’ll know more in a few years time, when people who lived under the smoke from the fire will be getting strange diseases or start sprouting extra heads, which of course will have absolutely nothing to do with that at all.