Wife tells of Wolsingham van blast tragedy

Oct 22 2008 by Neil Mckay, The Journal

A WIDOW told yesterday how she heard a “loud bang” as she lay in bed minutes after seeing her husband off to work.

It was only later that Jennifer Herd discovered the noise was caused by an explosion which killed her husband Andy and badly damaged the centre of a County Durham market town.

An inquest began yesterday into the death of Mr Herd, 33, of Mill Race, Wolsingham, County Durham.

The welder died when his van exploded in Wolsingham Market Square on the morning of Saturday, May 26 last year.

The force of the blast caused widespread damage to shops and homes in the town centre.

Mrs Herd told the inquest at Darlington County Court yesterday that her husband was “over the moon” to discover that a hospital scan revealed she was expecting a girl, the couple’s first child, just four days before he was killed.

Shortly before 7am on the day of the tragedy her husband left to go to work at his employers, Ward Brothers Plant Hire in Langley Moor, Durham, about 25 minutes drive from his home.

Mrs Herd, who was 20 weeks pregnant at the time, said: “I heard Andy go but I stayed in bed because it was a Saturday. I heard an explosion. I had no idea what it was. I heard a loud bang.”

She said her home was less than a mile from the spot where her husband’s van exploded.

Eyewitness Philip Barnes, a market trader who was setting up his stall in the Market Place, described how he saw a red Transit van coming towards him.

He said he saw it had the logo Ward Brothers on the side, and told the inquest: “Suddenly it exploded. There was no warning, nothing. The bang was very loud, the van was left in pieces.”

Mr Barnes, under questioning from coroner Andrew Tweddle, insisted it was “two minutes” before flames began to emerge from the van after the explosion.

The inquest is attempting to establish how cylinders of acetylene gas from oxy-acetylene cutting equipment kept by Mr Herd in his van, and used by him in his welding job, came to explode.

Mrs Herd was asked whether her husband smoked, and she insisted that he had stopped four years before the tragedy.

She added that he worked long hours and had not finished until 7.30pm the night before he was killed. “That was par for the course,” she added.

The inquest, before a jury, continues today.