05/02/2014 Look East - East

rise. That is

In Look East tonight, the explosion that destroyed two houses in Clacton

and left two people seriously injured. I was trying to clear the

rubble and the lady was severely burned. Another gentleman helped get

her out. It is just chaos. Hello from Susie and me.

Also tonight: A union challenge to multi`million pound cuts to mental

health services. The ashes shambles Graham Gooch on

Peitersen and Cook. And the new smartphone app that could help to

find the cure for cancer. Hello.

First tonight, more on the explosion that destroyed two houses at Clacton

in Essex. It is thought that was caused by a gas leak.

It was half past eight this morning when people living near Cloes Lane

in Clacton heard a huge bang. Some said it sounded like a bomb or an

earthquake. Two houses were completely destroyed and many more

were damaged. Tonight two people are still seriously ill in hospital. 20

homes were evacuated and the local primary school was closed. Air

ambulances used the school playing field as a helipad. Let's go live to

our reporter Richard Daniel who's at the scene. Richard. Ten hours after

the blast in this residential road, the emergency services are still

hard at work but are winding down now. Demolition work of these two

buildings has been completed for the evening. Gas supplies have finally

been restored to these homes and electricity supplies as well. This

means that most families can return to their homes but a few cans

because their properties are unsafe. At this blast taken place in ten

minutes later as road would have been packed with parents taking

their children to the local primary school. Emergency services say there

would have been more casualties. The force of the explosion was huge,

it let two semidetached homes in ruins. One totally ruined. From the

air the skill of the devastation is clear. The last four through the

house as this man was driving his children to school. There were many

people helping people out and everyone came together. They did

what they could. You went in to help? I did, I was trying to clear

the rubble. It really was severely burned. Another gentleman helped get

her out. `` hey lady was severely burned. It was chaos. The woman was

taken to hospital in Chelmsford with severe burns. A man in his 70s was

airlifted to hospital with life`threatening injuries. Eight

others were taken by road to Colchester Hospital. From an

explosion you would expect blast injuries and burns and minor cuts

and bruises. It sounded like a bomb going off, and earthquake underneath

you. Windows shook, doors came open and rubble came in. I met a couple

who came out, they were very upset. They have gone into a neighbour 's

house and I have their dog. The police have just allowed us up of

the explosion and this truly shocking, there is devastation for

hundreds of yards around the house. Bits of building lying around the

street, wreckage everywhere. The blast broke windows, export and

gutters, added 20 homes were evacuated as National Grid engineers

worked to make the area safe. Late this afternoon contract is began

demolition work. Essex Fire service said the force of the blast was

immense. The remainder of the devastating impact gas explosions

can have. I can give you an update on those

injured. Seven of the apes taken to hospital have now been released. One

person is being kept in overnight for observation.

Hash`mac Seven of the eight taken to hospital. It has been a very

traumatic day for people living on this road but tonight they know it

could have been much worse. The explosion happened in a quiet,

residential part of Clacton. Bricks and tiles were blown hundreds of

yards and as a precaution the local school and homes on two streets were

evacuated. Kevin Burch reports on how local people reacted to the

blast. A man is led by a police officer through the rubble and out

of the court and he was one of many. Some were taken to a local pub,

others to this primary School. The building had earlier been rocked by

the blast, 20 children where inside at the time and the breakfast club.

This almighty bang, and I thought it sounded like the rough outcome of

the building so obviously I made some enquiries to see if there was

anything in the kitchen or boiler room. As I came out to the front of

the school I could see the road, there were flames coming out of the

house. The children were all OK and immediately sent home, the segment

provided a landing spot for the air ambulance teams are for the school a

realisation that the impact could have been far worse. If it was a

half hour later, it could have been more frightening for the children

and more chaos, yes. The emergency services had no option but to keep

the area sealed off and on advice from the police a rest centre for

residents unable to get back into their homes was set up at the town

hall in Clacton. Gloria Barker was grateful on what was a bitingly cold

day to be inside the rest centre with her son`in`law. She was

directly opposite the side of the explosion. Likely to be alive, I

think. When you see the houses opposite. `` lucky to be alive. You

thank your lucky stars that you are alive. Our team are all volunteers

and the main thing is to show compassion and make sure they are

OK. If anyone needs medical assistance we have people we can

draw on to bring it to them. Eventually Gloria was told she can

return home. This is a well organised and highly trained team.

Ready to respond at a moments notice. Very good, we have been

looking after the dogs as well. They have been really good.

Late this afternoon I spoke to Paul Hill from the Essex Fire and Rescue

Service. I started by asking if they know the exact location of the

explosion. We don't know where it started yet, but we know is that the

most likely cause is gas, but we don't know yet whether it is a means

of supply are the kinds of light, a bottled sauce. It is unlikely that

this sort of explosion could be caused by anything else. `` a

bottled sauce. Did anyone smell gas in the time to the explosion? There

are reports of anyone smelling anything before the explosion,

certainly the gas board had no indication and there were no other

reports to the fire service or through the main naming system of

any smell of gas. I know we have people who are seriously entered but

it is amazing that no one has been killed. It is, people might not feel

very fortunate at the moment but it could have been a huge amount worse.

If you see the actors of the explosion you will see that most of

the rubble has been thrown away from the house is the house did not

collapse on people which is maybe why we have not had more tragic

outcomes. What has been the reaction of the staff there? The police and

fire service and I've within five minutes of the call and very quickly

people were rescued from the incident and the fire was

extinguished. There was a fire that continued because it was fed by a

gas supply that we are led to burn under controlled conditions for some

time but the vast majority of what we needed to do was done extremely

quickly. By the time we got there there were passers`by already

helping people out of the rubble and they must be commended for their

actions. They were magnificent. We are often told that people should

not go into buildings like this and it can be dangerous but you think

they did the rate thing? I think it would be an extraordinary thing to

do, to what passed an incident like this and not help. The people who

walked past saw people in need and help them. There was danger but it

was reasonable for them to do what they did. Even with firefighters

leaders trained like BR, the risk was there but the respondent

magnificently. `` even with firefighters like ours. National

Grid tell us we cannot find any fault or the paperwork going into

the houses so it must have been something inside the house. `` fall

in the pipework. And will wait until the investigation is continued. If

they say there is no fault outside then I trust them but there is a

fault that Cosmos and we will find out it was. `` fault that caused

this. The biggest health union has said it

won't accept major cuts at the Norfolk and Suffolk Mental Health

Trust which it says are putting the safety of patients and staff at

risk. Unison has raised the issue as a formal grievance and if nothing's

agreed there could be a chance of industrial action. In a darkened

studio maintaining her anonymity this woman told her of the ten years

of vital support she received or mental health problems that began

when she was a young student. I always had a care coordinator, most

of the time, and that was someone I could phone when things were

difficult but also someone who would see me when I was well and who knew

me as a whole person. They could lead me to do something really `` be

times when I was ill could lead me to do something really dangerous.

Will that support be there now? Not really, no. I believe there are

three or 400 people without a care coordinator. That is the person who

makes sure you are safe. They literally care for you. Without them

it is a very dangerous situation and I don't think I would have survived.

The now discharged patients concerned are concerned about the

?40 million of budget cuts. There will be 400 job losses and a 20%

reduction in bed. Sheila is a newly appointed governor and long`term

care for her son, Leo, pictured here as a schoolboy, diagnosed with

schizophrenia at the age of 20. It is an impending crisis in the trust

has got to take your breath and look at what is happening. What people

are saying. There has got to be a regular meaningful interface between

service users and the trust. Managements tonight deny that the

trust is in crisis. I don't think we are in crisis, we have said all

along that there are issues within some of those services that we

provide, we recognise that. I have been to health overview and scrutiny

committees in the Suffolk recently we have acknowledged that there are

issues around the axis to services and we have committed to a review of

the best situation in several more folk and we are looking and working

with the community teams on the caseloads. Sometimes those changes

take time. The trust say they will continue to implement a strategy but

it will remain under constant review and consultations will continue with

unions, staff and patients and their families. It rejects any suggestion

that the services they provide are unsafe.

Colchester Castle will not be reopening to the public in time for

the Easter holidays after all. The museum has been closed for nearly a

year for a face`lift costing ?4 million. It will now re`open on May

the 2nd. Access for visitors and the displays have been improved.

Originally they hoped the work would be finished by next month. A

celebration still to come, the game for your

mobile phone that its cutting`edge research.

And after the shambles in Australia, the England cricket

called on what went wrong in the Ashes.

This year about 50,000 young people in this region will start an

apprenticeship. Figures released today show the number of places in

this region and the number of applicants are both going up.

The official figures are taken after the school summer holidays. Between

2012 and 2013 the number of applications went up by nearly

10,000 across the Look East region. In the same period the number of

apprenticeship vacancies rose by more than 600 to nearly 3,500. Our

business correspondent Richard Bond has this report. Our economy might

be on the mend but youth unemployment remains stubbornly

high. One reason why the government has been spending more on

apprenticeships. But across the economy there is a genuine need to

train our young people. The East Coast energy sector faces a huge

skill shortage. The energy services firm the sun has a training academy

in great Yarmouth and in the past year student numbers have gone up to

200. We have always had a base load of oil and gas to fill the order

book and what we are seeing now is a very large increase for fuel and

wind turbines technicians. Among the pages as here, Angela Hawthorne. In

her 30 of training with plenty of prospects. I can go anywhere around

the world. I could travel and that would be carried out and testing

installation work, commissioning as necessary, as required. A lot of

opportunities there. Apprenticeships remain very much in demand. Over the

past year applications in the region have risen by 33% to 39,000. Access

electronics is a high`tech employer in Bedford, making printed circuit

boards. They have doubled their apprenticeship this year.

Apprenticeships are with our succession planning so we have new

people coming through the business trains to the standards required. Of

`` all of our apprentices and join us on a permanent contract and stay

as part of our team going forward and the number of apprentices now

are in quite senior roles within the business. I get to work out a proper

electronics company, get a course from the Company at the same time. I

am an apprentice ambassador which means I get to go to other schools

and tell children, your 11, ten, 15, the benefits of being an apprentice.

Tell them there are other opportunities rather than going to

university. With an average of 12 applicants for every vacancy, the

government urges many more employers to come forward and offer

apprenticeships. And Richard is with me now. So there

are more apprenticeships but still nowhere near enough why not? I think

that some firms view the whole business on apprenticeships as too

complex, too much red tape and they don't want to know. Smaller

companies may feel they are not big enough to handle them. Maybe they

don't have a personal apartment to hold their hand. Some companies also

make the wary of apprenticeships because of a bad experience in the

past 20 a lot of time into someone and it has not paid off for the

company. There are always firms that prefer not to train at all and

recruit or porch staff who have been trained by other people. There are

incentives for employers to take on apprentices? If you take on an

apprentice between the age of 16 and 18 the government should fully fund

that the British. If you take on an apprentice who is 19 or over then

the government should fund half the cost. The government is currently

trying to revamp appendicectomy and more user`friendly.

Now cricket and it would be hard to imagine how the England tour of

Australia this winter could have been much worse. Hammered in the

Ashes hammered in the one days hammered in the T20. The Australians

called it a 'Pomnishambles'. Already England have ditched their head

coach Andy Flower, and their top batsman Kevin Pietersen. But the man

in charge of England's batting down under was the Essex and England

legend Graham Gooch and today he spoke to Look East about defeat

captain Alastair Cook and Pietersen's shock sacking.

A sponsored stay at the County ground in Telstra, a far cry and

welcome distraction for Graham Gooch, after one of the longest and

unhappy adulterers in English cricket. The commitment to the

cricket was not there. `` and unhappiest tourers. In every

department we wear lacking. We all must bear the burden of

responsibility. The Follett has been considerable, the head coach has

gone and one of the biggest stars of the game, Kevin Pietersen, has been

told he is no longer wanted. What has he been led to manage in the

dressing room? Your Mac Kevin plays box office

innings. He can be a match`winning player. That is clear. He has

supplied many innings like that. The dressing room was fine but we did

not perform. One man who has captained Kevin Pietersen in the

past is Jason Galleon, now a teacher at Felsted School. Kevin as a

batsmen could win games. Everyone who supported England and who hasn't

seen him play with like him play with lichen to win games, I suppose

that sometimes the manner he get out in the way he gets out as part of

his enigma. Is the unmanageable? He is if he is not motivated. And with

something like England he must be motivated. If you are not motivated

playing for your country you never will be. The BBC understands that

Alistair Cooke played an influential role in the decision to end Kevin

Pietersen 's international career. Whether cooked remains captain is

also a matter for debate. Alistair is a proud man, he has been a

wonderful player for England and has many years hopefully in front of

him. He has been a role model and is very disappointed. More than

disappointed. He is hurting bad. As is everyone. How of the response

from this? Many people are questioning whether or not he should

remain as captain. After the trip England have had to Australia and

everyone is questioning everyone's position. Alistair is strong enough

in mind to improve after this, I think he should remain as captain.

Graham Gooch told me he wanted to remain at the back in court,

determined his coaching career will not be defined by the Ashes in the

lesion. `` remain as a batting coach. Was he hard to handle? A long

pause! Scientists in Cambridge have come up

with a new idea for us to help them find new treatments for cancer. They

want you to download a new game and play it on your smartphone. It's

called 'genes in space' and researchers at Cancer Research UK

say that playing it will crunch the numbers and analyse important data.

We sent Mike Liggins to find out more.

This is the Cancer research UK Institute in Cambridge. And this is

the traditional image of Cancer research. Scientists in white coats

experimenting with cancer cells. But these days effective cure for the

disease is increasingly being fought by computer scientists. We just do

this and we have trained `` we have traced... This is the new smartphone

game, Genes In Space. It has been created to help analyse the mass of

data being produced. We have many computers for doing this, but still,

they have an accuracy of 90 or 95%. What we're trying to do all of these

machines and algorithms is trying to look at each computer and teach them

how to think like humans. The question is, why do we need Apple,

why doesn't one person do all the analysis? The answer is it would

take forever and be extremely boring. So, you download the game

and Maggie route through space. Only this is real genetic data. The

scientists need you to spot changes in the data. You therefore in a

spaceship on that road, finding asteroids on the way in the

information is sent back to Cancer research UK. There are 46,000 sets

of data and for accuracy the scientists need each set to be

analysed 50 times. Every two minutes, someone in the UK is

diagnosed with cancer. Helen had left cancer and with the

chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a mastectomy. Her mother died from

breast cancer and she has two daughters. Emily and Rebecca. My

main concern is that by the time of my daughters get to there are better

cure is in better research available or preventative measures or whatever

it takes to ensure that they remain well. Cancer research UK with like

you to download the game. If you are over the age of 40 you made need a

young person to help you but it is great fun and you might be helping

any small way to find a cure for cancer.

There were some people in the studio and make the someone younger!

That explains it! It all turns nasty last week, didn't

it? Yes, some wet and windy weather. We had a dry spell but then more

bite and windy weather this afternoon. These are the strongest

gusts at her professional recording stations. In Northampton, 54 mph. ``

at our official recording stations. We have a rush of showers coming in

and then more to rattle on through. Into this evening and overnight the

showers should become few and far between, but the sediment of dry

weather with clear spells. The wind is already starting to use down so

for much of the evening we should have a moderate to finish so for

south`westerly wind. Temperatures and should not fall much slower than

four degrees. Tomorrow, another area of low pressure and another weather

system pushing him from the south, bringing yet more rain and this

little system behind the bringing wet and windy weather for the

weekend. But this one, this will pressure and this weather front will

take a little while to reach us tomorrow. We start off largely

financed cry with brightness and sunshine for many of us. `` largely

fine and dry. We have showers pushing up from the north and then

some rain. Temperatures pushing up to around seven degrees, some of us

may even get a degree or so higher. For much of tomorrow it will be

moderate to fresh, and then the wind will tend to pick up again as he

heads into tomorrow evening. Look what we have for the end of

tomorrow, through the evening at actually through much of tomorrow

night. More rain, heavy at times especially in the South. We could

easily see two or three degrees. Some of us in the South might see

more of that. The rain will continue to push through and it set the scene

forthrightly, much of Friday will be cloudy further outbreaks of rain and

quite blustery wind. It might be that the extreme west of a region

could see some dry and great weather for the end of Friday, it depends

how quickly the rain moved out of the way. The low pressure system

will move in and determine how quickly we get more heavy rain and

the strongest winds. It looks like rain moving through on Saturday will

give way to showers and blustery winds that the LA hours of Sunday

could cost between 50 and 70 mph and then more outbreaks of rain and

windy conditions on Sunday. Those are your overnight lows.

I was going to see I make DNS tomorrow but I would have to stay in

bed for four days! CU tomorrow!

NICK CLEGG: Are you in, or are you out?

That's the real question at stake at the European elections on May 2 nd.

even though that would wreck the recovery and destroy jobs.

The Conservatives are now openly flirting with exit,

and the Labour Party, well, they just don't have the courage

they wouldn't lift a finger to help keep Britain in the EU