It's an image seared on the brains of thousands of residents who fled their beds in the dead of night, many without shoes and clad only in boxers or flimsy pyjamas: Gigantic balls of fire exploding like sunbursts high above their homes.
Hundreds of windows shattering. Toxic asbestos coating lawns and choking smoke filling the air. Buildings rocked from their foundations.
And with the tremendous boom, roused residents scattered in terror out of their northwest Toronto community like ants from a smoked-out colony.