Be interesting to see when the dust settles how it compares to the similar disaster at Galveston. Tragic for Beirut, of course.
You have to feel for those close by witnessing the detonation, I for one cannot imagine being there. Lets hope it was an unforeseen incident rather than something more sinister, the planet is going through a rough time as it is.
The article I read said, Ammonium Nitrate was being stored in a unsafe manner, I am not a chemist, but doesn't it out gas when it goes damp and then run along pipes and sewers?
I'm no chemist either to be honest! But it does sound plausible to do that, especially if it becomes very dense.
There was a similar explosion some years ago when ammonium nitrate was in a hold of a ship that was on fire. Ammonium nitrate isn’t usually dangerous (it’s an oxidiser and needs a fuel source to become an explosive, such as diesel which is often mixed in to produce an explosive called Anfo) unless you put it to heat and pressure - then it will detonate without the fuel component presence. The explosion levelled a town iirc in Nova Scotia.
This was a similar level of material https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_disaster leveled the port and they found the ship's anchor some good distance away.
I think everyone watching the news must have said blimey, or a similar phrase when the big mushroom cloud type blast happened. We thought the smaller explosion was it, until the massive one I can’t imagine anyone working in the Port area could have survived, and so many people in the city must have had glass/debris injuries. It does beggars belief that a possibly unsafe material had been there for so long without being sorted.
It may have cost a lot, but then again if the port authorities had been given permission they might have sold the ammonium nitrate. I suppose it had to be fairly secure so that the locals didnt convert it into explosives, so they couldnt just have left the door open and let it evaporate into the farming community,..
I wonder if the Americans were involved somewhere along the line, Why was it there? Who will take responsibility for it being there? You keep that there cheap ....and we pay you as little as we can .. The yanks like to keep things Safely away From them with minimum cost but maximum profit Bhopal Springs to mind
Isn't Ammonium Nitrate the fertiliser of choice for our home-grown terrorist bombers. I seem to remember that last year a farming supplier reported to the police that a couple of young lads living in a suburban home had ordered 250kg of Ammonium Nitrate - who obviously weren't going to spread it on fields or even their allotment - and so a terror attack was thwarted.
Farming contributes less than 5% of Lebanon's GDP so I seriously doubt that stockpike had anything to do with farming. More likely some dealings linked to Hezbollah. Absolutely incredible power when you see the footage of the explosion.
The bomb that blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City was a ammonia nitrate and fuel oil device. That completely destroyed the building and was only the size of a rental truck, can you imagine the force that 2700 tons of the stuff can produce. I simply don’t believe that the death rate isn’t in the thousands.
