People are used to huge fireballs in movies because they just aerosolize gasoline or others for that effect. Also it's a lot safer than high explosives. High explosives are dangerous.
An goes at around 10,000 feet/second or 6,800mph or 10,900 kmh.
In those videos when the white large cloud comes out (likely some form of the air being hyper compressed by the shockwave and forced faster than the speed of sound) I was like drop Camera get behind wall nooooooowwww. Or we'll keep camera it may be useful in about 45 minutes.
The white cloud is due to the shockwave causing moisture in the atmosphere to condense. Or rather immediately after the shockwave in the low pressure region.
You can see the same effect sometimes due to supersonic aircraft.
Remember, you knew it was an explosion before watching the video.
I remember I got the same reaction, but I've watched the video multiple times, I think the first time I would have been as slow as the guy filming.
My point was that I was actually in my head imagining dropping the phone and running away while I watched.
I also didn't know it was going to be that big of an explosion.
I've got plenty of memories of just not moving fast enough in an bad situation.
Tianjin was definitely bigger, Beirut has people surviving that were a couple hundred m away. That didn't happen in the former: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkDtMl5Ec7k