h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

30 years

At around 5pm on Saturday, June 1, 1974, I was sitting round the teatable at 3 Ings Lane having tea with mum, dad and my brothers. I was a sub-editor in Hull in those days but had come over on the New Holland ferry the previous day to spend the weekend with the family. As we ate and chatted, the kettle stopped singing. My mother said: "I thought I asked you to put the kettle on?" to one of us. At that point, the electrical sub-station next to the Flixborough caprolactam plant had been vapourised by the explosion, killing the supply. A huge shockwave was, at that moment, sweeping around the coast to Whitton. "I did put it on and it was singing", said one of us and as we all looked at the offending kettle there was a mighty crash and one of the windows in the kitchen fractured.

We shot up and looked over the field to where a huge plume of smoke was tearing into the sky. The steelworks at Appleby Frodingham had 'gone up' was the family's thought but to me the direction seemed closer to Burton Stather than to Scunthorpe.

My journalistic instincts came to the surface. "Take me to that" I said to my brother pointing to the column of smoke and in a flash we were off in his car.

Burton Stather looked like a bomb had hit it as we drove through. People were standing outside their homes, where doors were blown in and windows smashed, dazed and covered in blood. Some houses had their roof torn off and the closer we got to Flixborough there were more houses in this state.

On the back road between Burton and Flixborough we found a perfect viewpoint to look down on the devastated plant. An incredible firestorm was burning with such ferocity that it was pulling in great pockets of air to feed itself, from the hills behind us and from across the Humber. 40 miles away in Hull, the pressure wave had raced across the river unhindered and broken windows in the city.

The firestorm was rumbling and we left for our own safety. In Thealby, some 20-25 minutes after the blast, pieces of smoking sheet metal were landing on the road in front of us, causing my brother to swerve. A little further on, just through Coleby, we were waved down by a frantic woman and her family who stopped their car in the middle of the road. "It's not Flixborough is it!? My husband works there. Please tell me it's not Flixborough!". All I could do was look at her and say "I'm so sorry, so sorry. Yes, it's Flixborough". She cried out and started sobbing. "Look, he probably left before the explosion' I said (the blast came shortly after a shift change - in fact 28 died and it could have been many, many more). "Have you seen it?" she wanted to know. Yes, I told her, we have just come from there. "And?" All I could do was shake my head. We got back into the car, leaving her sobbing with her family in the road.

Later that evening we took Mum up to Winterton as BBC Radio Humberside was broadcasting a warning that poisonous gases from the explosion may drift round the coast to land on Whitton. My eldest brother, Dave, and his wife and daughters lived in Winterton. While we were there discussing the disaster, a radio broadcast said that deadly toxic clouds were heading for Whitton. "We've got to rescue the dogs!", we said.

My dad was away in Grimsby that day. He bred black Labrador dogs to retrieve to hand and we had had dogs in kennels behind our house for as long as I could remember.

All four brothers piled into the car and drove back down to Whitton. As we approached Bishopthorpe, the scene was like something from War of the Worlds - huge, individual grey-white clouds were floating over the village and softly falling to nestle in the fields like immense evil mushrooms. And a police car was pulled across the road. Luckily, there was just one police officer.

"I'm sorry lads you can't go in, we have evacuated the whole village. Look at those things", he said, indicating the bizarre clouds.

We explained that we had to go in, rescue the pups and come out. Whether he liked it or not, we said, we were going in. He looked us up and down for a few seconds. "Well for God's get in and get out but I'm giving you five minutes and that's it", he said.

We were past him, down into Ings Lane and into the back kennels in two minutes, throwing the black pups out hand-to-hand, their ears flapping in the soft summer night, eyes wide in wonder as we passed them, one to the other, in a human chain, down to the car. Above our heads on Ings Lane, weird perfectly-formed lozenge clouds the size of several houses were silently settling down into adjacent fields and across local lanes. Then it was into the car, doors slammed and up and out of the village, pausing only to thank the police officer and show him that we had the dogs safe and sound. "Right, now **** off, this village is closed", he said.

That night, in the Butchers Arms pub in Winterton, we watched the raging fire on News at Ten. People came up to us in the bar. "Are you the guys who went back to Whitton for the dogs? What's it like? Is it true they've cordoned the village off?" and so on.

Hours later, we slept on the floor of my brother's house, utterly exhausted. Around 3am, the Army came banging on the door to say that Winterton had to be evacuated as well. Not that they got any answer from the house. We only knew about it because a neighbour came round the next morning and told us. About an hour after the Army had been, the wind shifted and the alert for Winterton was called off.

"It would not have mattered how long they beat on your door", said the neighbour: "I don't think they were waking you lot up".....