In the early morning hours of Sunday, August 10, 2008, a massive explosion and inferno errupted at the Sunrise Propane facility in the Canadian city of Toronto.

The Sunrise Propane facility is located in the North York section of the city.

The explosion and ensuing inferno caught the attention of the entire city. Thousands of local residents from their sleep and gripped the city in a state of fear and uncertainty as subsequent explosions knocked out power to half of the city.

Unfortunately, two lives were lost during this industrial disaster. One of those lives lost happened to be an employee at the facility who was killed in the initial blast. The second fatality was a firefighter who suffered a heart attack at the scene while battling the blaze.

Two dozen other people were treated by paramedics and at hospitals for emotional trauma.

Several thousand residents living within a a 1.6-kilometer (or 1 mile) radius of the facility were evacuated and several major highways near the area were shutdown to motorists.

City officials used commuter buses and drivers from the local public transportation authority (known as the Toronto Transit Commission) to assist in the mass evacuations.

It took 200 firefighters over 12 hours before the five alarm blaze was finally extinguished.

On August 4, 2010, The Toronto Star reported that the massive Sunrise propane explosion in 2008 was caused by an illegal "tank-to-tank transfer" along with a gas hose leak. The report said that liquid propane was released from a hose after a "tank-to-tank transfer" was completed. The Star reports that Sunrise didn't have the right licence to perform those types of transfers, and it was previously barred from doing so by the Technical Standards and Safety Authority in November 2006.

The Sunrise Propane facility was decimated in the this disaster. There is also a massive class action lawsuit pending against Sunrise Propane.

In this particular video, the biggest explosion during the incident causes a massive power outage to much of Toronto.

You can find out more about the Toronto Sunrise Propane facility disaster here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Toronto_propane_explosion