Yes this reminded me of Tianjin as well. What shocks me is the second explosion detonated an estimated 800 tons of ammonium nitrate, and Beirut is estimated to have detonated 2700 tons...Truly shocking to watch, a complete failure to protect the public by someone.
The only other thing I've seen of a similar scale is the following.
I grew up near a major fertilizer manufacturer, Cominco(now https://www.teck.com/ ). By the trainloads they made it. We used that explosive mix stuff all the time. Until a prick set a garbage can off with diesel beside the Provincial Gov building. It blew out the windows in local 2 churches and lots of downtown buildings. I lived downtown when it happened. It reverberated between the valley sides for some I guess 15 seconds. I was shocked to hear it as I was sleeping and woke up to the bouncing sound waves off the valley mountains. Canada is not all peaches and cream!If there are any members here affected by this tragedy, my deepest condolences and please let us know the best way to help from an on-the-ground perspective. There are lots of aid organizations, but from here it's hard to know which ones are most effective on the ground.
Hopefully this tragedy will be a wake-up call all over the world. Dangerous materials are stored unsafely everywhere in the world, sometimes with consequences that can be bad in their own right, if not destructive on this scale. For example, a few years ago substances left under an overpass caught fire melted the concrete bridge, severing one of the two major arteries of Atlanta for months.
Can we not cite Russian propaganda please?
You just re-cited it.
Whose propaganda would be prefereable to cite?