Another reliable eyewitness report...
"It sounded like an airplane had given out of fuel. We thought it was trying to make it to the airport. But a few minutes later we heard a loud `boom,'" she said.
A few minutes later ?
Lacking a complete language, we Americans frequently measure intervals using the folllowing precision estimator:
'Then it went" = immediate
'Few minutes later" = greater than 'then it went'
'While later" = greater than a few minutes
'A while later" = greater then while later
'Sometime later' = 1 day to 6 weeks, used only by journalists