Blasts, fire at Toronto propane depot

Basic Information

August 10, 2008.: A fire and several huge explosions occurred at a propane depot in Toronto, Canada.

Although it's not obvious from the video, this sort of facility is prone to BLEVE events (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapour Explosions) in which a small leak of burning material can turn a storage tank into a fuel-air bomb - which is the likely cause of the massive explosion. The case study for such things is usually the San Juanico disaster of 1984.

Sources

Original story
YouTube video of the fire - skip to 1:50 for a huge explosion, complete with screams and a mushroom cloud.
The San Juanico disaster at "the other wiki"

Game and Story Use

• Perhaps a fire demon or elemental got loose.
  • If you needed a lot of fire to manifest one, this might be an expensive way of getting it.
• The YouTube video makes for a a great, Cloverfield-esque video handout of what it would look like from a distance when someone needs to fight a gigantic creature with lots of fire and explosives.
• In a Supers campaign, natural gas explosions make good disasters for heroes to contain and rescue people from.
• In a modern campaign, the PCs can discover a plot by the villains to blow up a propane depot which they must try to thwart
• The explosion could have extraordinary consequenses:
  • In Rumiko Takahashi's manga Fire Tripper, a gas explosion is the catalyst which activates a young girl's power to travel through time.
• Was it really a propane explosion?
  • In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, mention is made of a wizard's battle which killed several innocent bystanders and which was covered up by the Ministry of Magic as a "gas explosion"