We were awakened one morning several years ago by a single residential-sized tank exploding at a construction site a few blocks away. I drove by it a couple of hours later, and it was all taped off, of course. I looked at the damaged shipping container that had housed the propane and was appalled at the damage it received. However, I couldn't see much because of emergency vehicles and people blocking the view.
I came back a couple of hours late to a more clear but more horrible view. Turns out that the container that was so badly damage was the one NEXT TO the one that housed the explosion. Picture how heavily those things are constructed, then imagine the force it took to launch the door across the site (a large city lot about the size of 3 regular lots), across the road and 100 feet into the park across the street.
The container itself was peeled like the outer layers of an onion - "petals" of steel splayed outwards on the ground. Unbelievably, the worker whose cigarette had triggered the explosion got away with a single ruptured eardrum, and tried to come back to work later that day. The supervisor and doctors all noped him home.
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