ONE BIG BOOM

About 20 minutes ago, Claire and I were sitting in the kitchen when there was an enormous boom. It startled me, sent Miles running for the front door, and shook the house a bit. I went out front to see if there was evidence of anything and then called my friend across the street. Without any kind of greeting, she immediately said, "What was THAT?!" Neither of us could see anything outside so we ended the call, still a bit surprised and shaken.

Then a few minutes ago, she called me back and told me to look out my back window. Sure enough, there was a huge, dark grey plume of smoke rising up from the valley below. I checked online and found out that it was what we figured it must be: there was an explosion at an oil refinery a few miles from here.

I've been listening to the radio online and a number of people are calling in to report what they've seen, heard, etc. One lady that called lives about 20 miles north of here and said that she heard the boom. A man who lives in the same area that we do said that he thought that his plate glass sliding door was going to shatter. Another caller said that he was at a friend's house very close to the refinery. The house has 6 blown-out windows, the front door jam buckled, and their neighbor's garage door was blown in. Yikes!

The initial fire that created all that smoke is reportedly out now and that big cloud of smoke is slowly dissipating and blowing away. Here's hoping no one was hurt (or worse).