2008 Gërdec explosions

At approximately 12 p.m. local time on Saturday, March 15th, 2008, an ex-military ammunition depot in the village of Gërdec in the Vorë Municipality of Albania (14 kilometers from Tirana, the nation's capital), U.S and Albanian munitions experts were preparing to destroy stockpiles of obsolete ammunition. The methodical destruction of the old ammunition was supposed to occur with a series of small, controlled explosions. However, a chain of events led to the entire stockpile detonating simultaneously. Hundreds of houses were demolished within a few kilometres of the depot, while car windows on the Tirana-Durres highway were shattered by the main explosion, which involved more than 400 tonnes of propellant in containers. A large fire caused a series of smaller but powerful explosions that continued until 2 a.m. on Sunday. The explosions could be heard as far away as the Macedonian capital of Skopje, 170 km (110 mi) away.

Thousands of artillery shells, most of them un-exploded, littered the area. The blast shattered all of the windows of the terminal building at the country's only international airport, and every flight was suspended for approximately 40 minutes. Some of the 4000 inhabitants of the zone were evacuated and offered shelter in state-owned resorts. The Government declared the zone a disaster area. According to subsequent investigations, a privately managed ammo dismantling process was ongoing in the area.