With the recent explosion in China, it’s worth reflecting on vaguely similar explosions in the US.
Most famous is perhaps the PEPCON explosion in Henderson, Nevada, in 1988. This was a fire at an ammonium perchlorate production facility; the AP – a solid salt that is used as an oxidizer in solid rocket motors from ICBMs to the Shuttle boosters – was stored rather densely packed in barrels made from plastic and aluminum – which are used as rocket *fuel.* Added excitement came from the fact that this rocket propellant manufacturing plant was built directly on top of a 16-inch high-pressure natural gas pipeline feeding into Las Vegas. The yield of the explosions has been estimated in the area of one kiloton. When PEPCON blew up, it took out the plants ability to produce ammonium perchlorate. This was bad, due to the strategic value of the stuff; fortunately, there were at the time two major manufacturers of AP at the time, the other being Kerr-McGee. But due to what can only be considered bad planning, the Kerr-McGee plant was only 1.5 miles from the PEPCON plant and also received some damage.
Another exciting blast was a fertilizer plant in West, Texas. While nowhere near as energetic as the PEPCON blast, this one had the benefit of happening in 2013, well into the era of cell phone video cameras. Also well into the era of people not having a whole hell of a lot of common sense.
Of course, these all pale compared to the Texas City explosion of 1947, where 2,100,000 kilos of ammonium nitrate fertilizer detonated on the cargo ship SS Grandcamp. One of the ships damaged in the blast was the SS High Flyer, which had an additional 872,000 kilos of ammonium nitrate; after 15 hours of onboard fires, this, too, detonated, tossing the ships propeller a mile inland. Some 580+ people were killed at Texas City.
Of course, not every explosion is unintentional. Back when the US had a spine and was developing and testing nukes, the military would from time to time set of monumental chemical explosions in order to do some calibration testing and the like. One such as the “Sailor Hat” test in 1965, where 500 tons of high explosives were detonated on the shore of Kaho’olawe Island, Hawaii, trashing several nearby ships.