Big fire in London - lots of lovely pictures produced | Completetosh.com, by Neil McIntosh

A big fire broke out just after midday, in the east end of London. These days it’s inevitable (i) that we’ll all think it’s The End and (ii) that it’ll be massively photographed. Lots of clear blue skies, unhappy memories, but a far happier ending. And some really rather good photographs [note - first link changed after comments].

A challenge for mass media: what do you do when something interesting happens and, almost before you can really react, a huge, decentralised effort provides coverage you could only dream of? Ah - Kevin, sat next to me, provides the answer - you aggregate.

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COMMENTS / 5 COMMENTS

Fantastic - and not just the picture qulity - a great way of getting up to date info - as well as shooting down the rumour mongers/potential panic about it being a terror attack.

Now, if only someone could do this for the M8 in the mornings…

Craig McGill added these pithy words on Nov 12 07 at 2:37 pm

As for what does mass media do? What it should always do: present the best and also present in-depth analysis (though perhaps not in this case - but if it’s a slow day on the 24 hour news channels you never know)

Craig McGill added these pithy words on Nov 12 07 at 2:38 pm

The first picture link (the one at the “really”) is misleading though. They are not from today’s fire but the Buncefield oil depot fire two years ago.

Armin added these pithy words on Nov 12 07 at 8:42 pm

Whoops - well spotted Armin. You’re quite right. I hadn’t noticed that Flickr was sorting by relevance, not date, when I was doing that search. The weather was very similar. I’m going to change that link.

Neil Mc added these pithy words on Nov 12 07 at 11:34 pm