On 6 August 2018, the collision of a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) road tanker with an articulated lorry carrying flammable solvents and a car transporter resulted in a huge explosion on the A14 motorway within Borgo Panigale, a neighbourhood of Bologna, Italy.

It was a case of boiling-liquid expanding-vapour explosion (BLEVE), where nearly all the road tanker cargo combusted in a matter of seconds upon release, generating a tremendous amount of thermal radiation.

[1][2] The collision involved a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) road tanker, another articulated lorry carrying flammable solvents and a car transporter.

[1] The collision was caused by the road tanker, which rear-ended a near-stationary lorry laden with class-3 flammable solvents in intermediate bulk containers (IBC).

Cameras captured the tanker heading straight into the preceding vehicle, which possibly eliminates the hypothesis of mechanical failure, because steering and brakes would have needed to fail at the same time.

[1] The cargo of the rear-ended lorry ignited immediately, which resulted in a large pool fire engulfing the affected vehicles.

Computer simulations have assessed a blast overpressure of about 500 kPa at short distances from the source, in fact a value sufficient to cause the failure of a road bridge like the one involved in the accident.

[8] Given the tremendous thermal radiation, people within a radius of 100 metres (330 ft) from the exploded road tanker would have died or received major injuries.

Prime minister Giuseppe Conte visited the injured at the Ospedale Maggiore in Bologna, where most of the wounded had been hospitalized, and the burn unit in Cesena.