Breaking: Massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon

[daddyusmaximus]

[video=youtube;8SovqKGFlho]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SovqKGFlho[/video]

At her 50th anniversary...

Grandchild: Grandma, what was the most memorable thing about your wedding?

 

[Phase2]

Interesting background on the ammonium nitrate load at the center of this disaster.

"He Abandoned The Deadly Cargo": Meet The Mysterious Businessman At Center Of The Beirut Blast Saga

Short version:

• Port officials have been trying to have the material removed for years. They even suggested giving/selling it as fertilizer to farmers. Government officials have been ignoring the requests. Port officials are now under house arrest.
• The cargo was originally contracted to be shipped from Georgia to Mozambique.
• The ship was in major trouble with a hole in the hull, constant legal problems and a mutiny by the unpaid crew.
• The ship was impounded by Lebanese authorities due to severe safety issues.
• The cargo was supposed to be auctioned off. It never was and the ship eventually sank off of Lebanon. The crew was finally returned after several months.
• The ship owner was a Cyprus-based Russian, who abandoned the ship and crew, ended up disappearing and was not questioned.

What a cluster-****. This might be a simple case of Hanlon's razor: Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence, with a hefty helping of butt-covering by the government officials.

 

[T.Lex]

Yeah, having seen bureaucracies up close and personal, I have no problem believing that line.

Plus, in that part of the world, a couple thousand tons of AN can be... lucrative. Part of the delay may've been arguing about how to split up that particular pie.

 

[Phase2]

Can't buy that people argue for 6 years about how to split up a pie without actually doing it.

 

[T.Lex]

Can't buy that people argue for 6 years about how to split up a pie without actually doing it.

Well, there are competing interests - especially there.

No one wants to get caught sharing it with Hezbollah, but some were probably look for ways to make that happen (at least in small shipments). And others just want to make the money off of it. And with Russians involved, some oligarchs may have wanted a cut, too, but which ones and for how much. I can totally see (most of) it sitting for 6 years.

And, if I'm Mossad, that works just fine. Its not like this was some secret, apparently.

 

[Alamo]

If it was set off intentionally by some party who thought they would be targeted by it, the triggering event may have been an agreement on distributing it, or an effort by some party (**cough - Hezbollah - cough ***) to just grab it and move/use it.

 

[T.Lex]

Yeah, Israel may have gotten tired of the drip-drip conversion of the AN into explosives. A bit of deft forgery and arson, and all of a sudden you've got fireworks on fire next door.

Boom. Shakalaka.

 

[AtTheMurph]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1291395164595007488

 

[Tryin']

NONE of the original videos had that streak in them, and I freeze-framed a bunch. I tentatively call #fakenews.

 

[JettaKnight]

https://twitter.com/i/status/1291395164595007488

I see some clever video editing.

 

[KittySlayer]

...an agreement on distributing it...

From the videos it looks like they got a pretty wide area of distribution. Interesting way to spread fertilizer.

 

[johntheplinker]

This article says the blast was 1/5th the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Also, there is a drone photo of the destroyed silos and newly created bay.

Edit: Doing some quick research the Hiroshima bomb was around 15kt so that would put the Beirut explosion at about 3kt. According to Wiki the W54 suitcase nuke used by the United States was 1kt. So this explosion was three times more powerful than a suitcase nuke without the radiation of course.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/12311215/beirut-explosion-huge-blast-lebanon-capital-hiroshima/

From what I read this explosion was more in the order of .5-.7 kt. Large uncontained AN explosions are very inefficient and large portion of the AN is simply distributed across the landscape by the first portion to go off. Also one ton of AN is only 42% as powerful as 1 ton of TNT. At best it would have been 1.5 kt. Even so, 5-700 tons of TNT is one huge bang. And of course that all assumes it hadn't been "contaminated" with something a little more brisk.

 

[AtTheMurph]

I see some clever video editing.

Maybe you have to see it in infra red? lol

 

[Wolfhound]

From what I read this explosion was more in the order of .5-.7 kt. Large uncontained AN explosions are very inefficient and large portion of the AN is simply distributed across the landscape by the first portion to go off. Also one ton of AN is only 42% as powerful as 1 ton of TNT. At best it would have been 1.5 kt. Even so, 5-700 tons of TNT is one huge bang. And of course that all assumes it hadn't been "contaminated" with something a little more brisk.

I will take your word on that. I know very little about high explosives. Basically just what I read. The biggest stuff I played around with in the Army was Bangalore torpedoes and we were relatively far away when those went off.

Unrelated, the people directly responsible for this "accident" are either a fine red mist now or if cartoons are believable, in orbit.

 

[BiscuitsandGravy]

What kind of 'psi' is that shock wave and how fast does it travel?

 

[indyjohn]

What kind of 'psi' is that shock wave and how fast does it travel?

THAT is a great question... and I don't know the answer.

But my money is on "speed of sound". Some of the videos I've seen are the vapor cloud dissipates immediately followed by the glass blowns out/everything is tossed down the street like toys.

 

[tomcat13]

Perhaps Karma truly IS a Boomerang.

 

[SheepDog4Life]

My first thought, completely without evidence, was "Israel"....but do they have drones the size of a Saturn V rocket? 'cause that explosion...

Understandable in that part of the world... but my first thought, and second thought, and current suspicion, after learning that large quantities of AN were seized 7 years ago and housed close to "fireworks" was a bomb making operation.

I'm no chemist, but my limited understanding was that absent extreme heat and containment (as in the ship at Port of Texas City) it would take a "primary explosive" to detonate ANFO so I'm a skeptic that a "firework" could explosively detonate AN without FO in a relatively open warehouse.

Again, pure speculation on my part, but I think it cannot be ruled out that one end of this warehouse was a working bomb making shop with ANFO mixed in close enough proximity to HE primary explosive components that this accident was just waiting to happen. Perhaps a couple "finished products" at the end of the line waiting to be shipped?

It would also explain why 7 years of pleas to sell off the AN were ignored since this was, basically, an endless supply for IED manufacture. And it was "prilled" AN, pelletized for demolition/construction/mining blasting, not fertilizer.

So, to people that have the knowledge, can powder based fireworks detonate unadulterated AN?

 

[Clay Pigeon]

Its done by detonation or concussion...

 

[NKBJ]

So Beirut will be green next spring?