A photo from open sources
English journalists competed in wit, describing a phenomenon that struck Southern England. “New Great Stink” (allusion to events of the summer of 1858 in London, when the smell of sewage nearby from the Thames was so strong that it stopped the parliamentary meeting) “tennis rotten eggs” (indicating that the fetid cloud arrived from the continent). Don’t call it an event, but it caused mass reaction: national gas network, which usually have dealing with 10,000 calls nationwide per day, received over 100,000 calls in 2 hours. People were afraid of a gas leak that could be very dangerous. The smell of rotten eggs sailed to southern England from France. The population of coastal cities in Kent and Sussex discovered it first. Then by mid-day, the stunning stench spread not only in Surrey in Greater London, but across the country in a wide arc. Messages came from Oxfordshire and even from the far north of Northampton to the East Midlands and Dorset in the West. “It’s disgusting. It’s like broken rotten eggs. Absolutely unbearable. What is this? “- asked Susan Smith, following the other inhabitants, covering her nose with a handkerchief. A disgusting smell came from France, a cloud of gas “escaped” with factory in Rouen, Normandy. The gas that excited people was mercaptan that is added to natural gas to detect leaks. The smell of this gas (although the gas is harmless) is one of the most powerful – it is detected in a tiny concentration, one 2.8 billion parts of natural gas. In addition to the National gas network a flurry of calls hit firefighters, there was also unprecedented volume of messages. 42 crew even went to call. The Health Protection Agency assured the public that this the gas is non-toxic and will naturally disperse, however “An unpleasant odor can cause nausea in some people.” By according to the French Ministry of the Interior, the factory from the place the leak is owned by Lubrizol, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, an investor in the Warren Buffett group. But from them there was neither words last night about the reasons for what happened.
