Blowtorches can be ...., dangerous

There's ordinary foolishness, and then there's extraordinary foolishness. Stealing fireworks from a storage depot is foolishness. But using a welder's torch to cut through the wall of the building housing the fireworks - that is extraordinary foolishness.

Several burglars pushed their luck to the brink of failure when they tried to pull break into a building containing a large volume of fireworks. They used a gas cutting torch to slice through the main door. The door was eight feet tall, concrete, and reinforced with a solid inch of steel. Just as the torch penetrated the door, and success was at hand... a spark landed in a crate of fireworks inside.

Fireworks are explosive, and this particular crate contained the equivalent of a hundred pounds of gunpowder. The entire factory exploded. The door was popped from its hinges and slammed flat into the ground. The roof lifted off and landed in one piece. Interestingly, despite the violence of the explosion, the debris was confined within the factory perimeter.

Astoundingly, the perpetrators were not killed, and have never been found. Their cutting equipment remained behind, along with the car, which had been flattened by the concrete roof. Flabbergasted pyrotechnics professionals have dubbed them the "Hole in the Ground Gang."

Mind how you go now.