Leading the bulletins
91Èȱ¬ viewers - and listeners - led the way yesterday and helped shape our coverage as never before.
It all started with an unusually high number of calls mid-morning to 91Èȱ¬ Cambridgeshire from people saying they were having big problems with their cars, which prompted our Cambridge TV producer to call some other local radio stations. They were getting similar calls. She tipped off News 24, and our reporter Nicola Pearson began to make her own inquiries. It was clear that the story was growing.
Around 2.30pm, we put out the first flash on the story and presenter Jon Sopel asked viewers to text us on 61124 if they'd had car trouble.
The next few minutes were extraordinary. Within seconds the first few messages were starting to come in and then as we began to read some out, there was an absolute torrent of texts - all reporting the same symptoms: spluttering engines; cars losing power; breaking down, etc.
It seemed as though the problem was affecting a much wider area than we'd thought. By now, our producers were ringing garages and experts - they confirmed that not only was there a serious problem, but that garages were running out of the parts needed to deal with it.
The texts were coming in faster than we'd ever seen before - we rang back some of our texters and put them on the air, which prompted yet more texts and e-mails. We started to throw out other news, and by 3.30 it was clear we had a major story which would lead the bulletins.
We asked the supermarkets for their response, phoned yet more experts to try and find out what the problem was, and how our viewers could fix it, and we put up a map showing the areas over Britain that viewers were texting us from.
For the first time, the top story on News 24 was genuinely “Your News" - so thanks!
PS. In the last 24 hours we've already received more than 4,000 e-mails on this.
Comments
If the future of news is that stories like Iraq get pushed off the news just because a few people have 'car trouble' I really do despair.
What next, a concerted campaign by all Labour party supporters to 'bury bad news' by saying that their tyre pressures are a bit low ?
Using an email campaign by Number 10 about, say Road Pricing, to deflect news about the £12 billion NHS IT fiasco ?
Oh, that could never happen now could it? Take the 'News You Can Use' rubbish out of the Six O'Clock news and make it more like the proper news which Jon Snow presents on Channel 4.
I am not surprised at all you didn't win a thing at the RTS Awards if this dumbed-down populist nonsense is the best you can do. Go and watch 'Iraq In Fragments' at the cinema, or watch some of the coverage from there coming in from the News Agency wires to give you a clue about what news journalism is about.
'Your News' - Rubbish, It ain't my news, that's for sure.
I bought petrol in Lancaster, Lancs today for the first time for a month and lost power, experienced continual cutting out and final breakdown today. Breakdown truck took it straight to main dealewr and it awaits diagnosis. Never broken down before or had any problems with thia car.
I was in a meeting on Tuesday when the news of the suspected petrol contamination became mainstream and hence was not aware until arriving at work on Wednesday. Was informed that the problems could be related to ethanol in unleaded petrol. Possible I thought, but when later heard that the problems were likely to caused by malfunctioning lambda sensors, my immediate response was thet this is most likely a low level contamination problem. Ethanol or alcohol based fuels (could also use methanol or butanol or even mixtures of all three common alcohols as allowed by fuel regulations) can cause problems but would not cause sensor failures. The problems normally associated with use of alcohols in petrol are due to "phase separation". This is where the fuel comes into contact with water in garage forecourt tanks. Most tanks are likely to contain some water in the bottoms from delivery and from normal tank breathing (tank sucks in cold, moist air at night when the contents cool down and contract and the water vapour in the air condenses out, this builds up in the tank over a prolonged period, unless regularly drained). When the fuel comes into contact with the water layer, the alcohol in the fuel "dissolves" into the water layer, forming two phases, a fuel layer which is "devoid" of alcohol and a water/alcohol layer in the bottom of the tank. If the water/alcohol layer is of a reasonable volume, then this could be delivered into the cars fuel tank along with the fuel. This would obviously cause a lot of running problems as the water/alcohol layer would not combust and the fuel "may" be low in octane quality and vapour pressure(depending on how high the initial octane and vapour pressure !). Butanol gives less of a problem as its less soluble in water and hence less prone to phase separation. It the pertol retailer involved has just introduced this type of oxygenated "bioethanol" type fuel into the UK then this would have the effect of "drying" out the system and would cause a lot of problems unless each site receiving the "new" grade of fuel were given a good water draining. Most likely cause of this problem is from the following :-
1) Contaminated fuel from source (ie due to problems in manufacturing process or mixing with contaminants or additives which have not undergone rigerous validation/approval processes)
2) Fuel contaminated during transportation (ie ships tank not washed out after delivering other materials such as chemicals or waste oils etc)
3) Fuel contaminated due to "blending" of "distressed" fuels with good fuels at terminals/depots to make a good profit.
4) "Leaching" effect of the fuel on tanks, pipework or hoses used in the delivery system.
All of the above are possible causes, but my hunches are :-
Silicone and lead are known lambda sensor "poisons". As initial reports are that the fuel meets the motor fuel regulations, then lead is an unlikely candidate as this is one of the specification tests carried out on a routine basis, especially on imported fuel cargos which are more prone to contamination. If silicon is the problem, then this could come from the use of "recovered" "solvent" type materials from "used motor oils". When you take your used oil to the dump, this is "recycled" and the light boiling petrol and diesel residues in the oil are distilled off and could have been blended into the fuel either purposfully or in error. Depending on how well the solvent is recovered, then volatile silocon compounds (SILANES) can be distilled over with the fuel, or some silicone oil could get into the fuel due to poor handling at the facility.
If the use of "bio" fuels is new to the system, then the ethanol in the fuel could be responsible for "leaching" silicones out of fuel hoses or gasgets in the fuel delivery system.
If a ship had silicone based oils or used oils as a "previous" cargo, then this could be washed out of the ships tank into the fuel.
Lastly, I have heard rumours that some unscrupulous persons have been known "in the dead of night" to take on board "chemical waste etc" from a road tanker at unmanned jetties and give the ships captain a back hander.
Hope this may give some ideas as to what could have caused this crisis. could add a lot more but must go to bead.
I found this interesting statistic on the 91Èȱ¬ news story : "The 91Èȱ¬ has received more than several thousand e-mails from motorists..."
Not just several thousand but more than several thousand.
That's got to be a lot of thousands.
Regarding the possible cause of the contamination in petrol, it seems that your correspondent thinks that it was silicone. This is an elastomer (used for breast implants) and not the element silicon (note that there is no 'e' on the end). Further down the same report it mentions the formation of silicon dioxide on the oxygen sensor which then gives a wrong reading to the car's computer. I wish that when news people did an article on something technical, that they would check up on this kind of thing. I admit that it is very easy to get this wrong.
Please learn to differentiate between SILICON and SIlICONE (your reports on petrol refer) as there is a world of difference between them.