Disastrous non-nuclear explosions

Late on August 12, 2015, two explosions occurred at warehouses containing toxic chemicals and gas in the Chinese port city of Tianjin. According to state media, one of the blasts was equivalent to detonating 21 tons of TNT. The explosions killed 44 people and left more than 500 injured. Officials said just a week ago they had discussed tightening safety standards with companies at the port.

On July 6, 2013, a train of 73 tank cars of light crude oil derailed in the Canadian town of Lac Megantic. Left unattended at night, a small fire started, the brakes failed and the train rolled down a slight incline. The fire ignited the oil. There were two large blasts and several smaller explosions. Forty-seven people died in the disaster, and a good part of the downtown area was destroyed.

A blast following a fire at the West Fertilizer Company plant in the town of West, Texas killed 15 people and hurt more than 200 on April 17, 2013. The explosion flattened houses, left a huge crater and was so powerful that the United States Geological Survey registered it as a 2.1-magnitude earthquake.

Four thousand tons of military ammunition exploded at a depot at the Donguz test site in Central Russia on October 8–9, 2012. Thousands of people from two local towns were evacuated, and the shockwaves were felt as far away as Orenburg, 40 km from the scene. There were no casualties.

The 8.9 magnitude Tohoku earthquake in Japan on March 11, 2011, badly damaged chemical and oil complexes on the Pacific Ocean. Red hot fireballs resulted from boiling liquid vapor explosions at the Cosmo Oil refinery in Chiba. Storage tanks were heavily damaged or burnt.

An explosion presumably caused by a fire ripped through the Evangelos Florakis naval base munition dump in southern Cyprus on July 11, 2011. Dozens of people were injured, and at least 12 were killed. The explosion destroyed the base, knocked out the island's largest power plant and caused extensive damage to a neighboring community and a nearby popular holiday resort.

The Mozambican capital of Maputo was rocked for hours by a series of explosions on March 22, 2007. People fled in terror from the blasts at the country's largest ammunitions depot – an incident that was eventually blamed on high temperatures. Officials confirmed 96 dead and several hundred injured.

A massive explosion occurred at a fireworks factory on May 13, 2000, in the Dutch city of Enschede. Twenty-three people died in Europe's worst fireworks disaster, and 947 were injured. Hundreds of homes were leveled and more than 1,000 other buildings damaged, and the Roombeek neighborhood was completely ravaged.