I think you could do this CC Particle World. Particles can grow over time, so it’s should just be a case of getting the explosion dust looking right. Older particles are always in front though, so each ring might need to be a separate layer, but that might make life easier actually as whe nyou duplicate the layer, you just need to increase the radius.
Of course, you could avoid particles completley and manually place copies of stock footage of a ground explosion into the scenes, but that would take a bit longer.