Originally Posted by
Asturias56
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larges...ear_explosions
has a pretty comprehensive list - and a lot were "accidental"
Amazing how they drop off the collective memory compared with a terrorist attack for example.....................
eg On 21 September 2001, an explosion occurred at a fertilizer factory in
Toulouse, France. The disaster caused 31 deaths, 2,500 seriously wounded, and 8,000 light injuries. The blast (estimated yield of 20–40 tons of TNT, comparable in scale to the military test Operation Blowdown) was heard 80 km away (50 miles) and registered 3.4 on the Richter magnitude scale. It damaged about 30,000 buildings over about two-thirds of the city, for an estimated total cost of about €2 billion
To the best of my knowledge (gleaned first hand by locals out there) it still hasn't been fully settled as to whether or not that was a terrorist attack, or an industrial accident. The French government ultimately forks out the compensation (refunding the insurance compnay) if it's the former, the insurance company otherwise. So it was in the interests of the government that the official investigation labelled it an industrial accident, something the insurance company wasn't too happy about...
They were lucky; whilst it was quite a large amount that went up, immediately adjacent was a much large quantity that didn't. It was also adjacent to Arianespace's site where they make the fuel for their solid boosters, so there was another healthy collection of highly volatile material just waiting to go boom. All in all, it could have been substantially worse than it was.
It was heard and felt 55 miles away.