27,00,000 KG of Ammonium Nitrate stored for over 6 years went up in flames in the capital city of Lebanon, Beirut.
The blast ripped the city to pieces.
The blast shock wave was felt up to 25 kilometers away from the site of the blast.
Initial amateur videos splashed on the Internet almost made it look as a nuclear blast with a mushroom cloud rising from the site of the explosion.
Images of the aftermath show streets with smashed cars and the port reduced to rubble.
More than 150 people are reported dead from the attack. Hospitals are flooded with injured and bleeding.
Glass shreds lie all over the city.
And this could happen just about anywhere in the world.
There was a series of bomb blasts in Mumbai many years ago which too had a devastating effect on the city. While here it is not yet confirmed what was the cause, whether it was a terrorist attack or an accident, one thing is clear flying glass left a lot many people injured.
In Bombay too, when such a blast happened at Worli, the sun film applied to glass saved many lives as the glass did break but it did not fly.
In the case of Beirut, the blast intensity was so great that buildings up to 5 kilometer radius had their windows blown away and there was glass flying every where.
Maybe sun film, a sort of lamination on glass, would have prevented high causalities.
Glass is good to look at but if you are using the wrong kind of glass, there will always a price to pay.
Time modern cities learnt lessons from this incident/accident.