On Aug. 4, the world watched Beirut's waterfront leveled by a massive explosion. The blast, which killed at least 100 people and injured thousands more, looked like a nuclear detonation. In fact, it was ammonium nitrate—an extremely unstable additive to fertilizer.
Oregon had its own ammonium nitrate disaster. In 1959, a truck filled with 4 tons of the substance (and a couple tons of dynamite) was parked next to a building that caught fire in the town of Roseburg. It obliterated most of downtown. Fourteen people died.
David Kennerly watched it happen. He was 12 years old and staring at the fire 10 blocks away from his French windows at 2 am. The blast blew him across the room. He remembers fire falling from the sky.
"All I know is, one hell of a boom," he recalls. "It also blew up my junior high school. Unfortunately, I wasn't taking pictures then."