So I don’t want to imply that the Beirut disaster didn’t result in any casualties, because that’s obviously not true. But I was also thinking about the asteroid that hit Chelyabinsk which resulted in a lot of broken windows but not a great deal of injuries.
In: Physics
First of all humans are squishy while windows are fragile. A shockwave from an explosion will have a lot of force behind it but will not be able to push very far. If you push a human a few millimeters they will just absorb the hit without any issues but if you push a pane of glass the same amount it will shatter into a thousand pieces. So humans can be much closer to an explosion without receiving fatal injuries then rigid structures like glass or even concrete. Another reason is that windows are much bigger then humans, especially if you consider that a window is set in a wall. When a shockwave hits a human some parts of the shockwave will hit around the human and go around the back pushing from both sides. And if you have ever tried to punch a hole in a piece of paper by pushing it from both sides you know that this does not do much damage. However with a window the shockwave will hit the walls and never really gets into the room to support the window from behind. You might notice in a few of the images after shockwaves that windows that were left open are more likely to be intact as the shockwave was able to go around them.
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