Huge explosion in Beirut

[AMS]

Looks horrific and there'll be a lot of casualties I'm sure.

It's being suggested that a fire in the port spread to a storage facility full of ammonium nitrate.

[jimbob]

Yes the video looks consistent with something like that. As opposed to a bomb.

I have already seen one idiotic conspiracy theory resting on the idea that as it produced a mushroom cloud, it was a nuclear bomb.

[Martin Y]

Blimey. Bit late to suggest those dock warehouses are rather too close to populated areas for bulk storing explosive materials.

Puts one in mind of the Halifax NS explosion just over 100 years ago. Not on quite the same scale thankfully as that obliterated half the town.

[MartinDurkin]

My desk in Beirut looked out on that warehouse from about half a mile away. Not been back since the riots last November. Reports from the office say no one seriously hurt but some minor injuries. Feeling a bit shocked to be honest.

[Boustrophedon]

Registered at 3.3 on the Richter. Comparisons are difficult but that is around 100 tons TNT to within an order of magnitude. Probably towards the lower end of that estimate.

[AMS]

PM: 'Unacceptable' that 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate be in warehouse
Lebanon's Prime Minsiter Hassan Diab has said it is "unacceptable" that 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate were being stored in a warehouse.

"I will not rest until we find the person responsible for what happened so we can hold them to account and impose the most severe punishment," the prime minister was quoted as saying by an official Twitter account.

"It is unacceptable that a shipment of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate has been present for six years in a warehouse, without taking preventive measures and endangering the safety of citizens".

Seriously? WTF if that's true.

[sTeamTraen]

Registered at 3.3 on the Richter. Comparisons are difficult but that is around 100 tons TNT to within an order of magnitude. Probably towards the lower end of that estimate.

Reports say 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, and Wiki says that is 0.42 times as bangy as TNT, so you'd be up to 1,155 tons, which is about a tenth of a Hiroshima.

[headshot]

Bit like the Tianjin explosion a few years ago.

[Boustrophedon]

Registered at 3.3 on the Richter. Comparisons are difficult but that is around 100 tons TNT to within an order of magnitude. Probably towards the lower end of that estimate.

Reports say 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, and Wiki says that is 0.42 times as bangy as TNT, so you'd be up to 1,155 tons, which is about a tenth of a Hiroshima.

Doesn't look like 1,000 odd tons to my uneducated eye. Yeah one explosion looks like another, it's just scale, but a 100 tons would take out the building next door and leave the rest of the city bashed but not demolished. 1,000 tons and the whole block and those next door would have gone. I hate to go all conspiracy minded but is the ammonium nitrate story a cover for say a weapons dump?

I could well be wrong.

[dyqik]

Registered at 3.3 on the Richter. Comparisons are difficult but that is around 100 tons TNT to within an order of magnitude. Probably towards the lower end of that estimate.

Reports say 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, and Wiki says that is 0.42 times as bangy as TNT, so you'd be up to 1,155 tons, which is about a tenth of a Hiroshima.

Doesn't look like 1,000 odd tons to my uneducated eye. Yeah one explosion looks like another, it's just scale, but a 100 tons would take out the building next door and leave the rest of the city bashed but not demolished. 1,000 tons and the whole block and those next door would have gone. I hate to go all conspiracy minded but is the ammonium nitrate story a cover for say a weapons dump?

I could well be wrong.

A warehouse explosion won't be the same as an optimized bomb with the same quantity of explosive.

[sTeamTraen]

Doesn't look like 1,000 odd tons to my uneducated eye. Yeah one explosion looks like another, it's just scale, but a 100 tons would take out the building next door and leave the rest of the city bashed but not demolished. 1,000 tons and the whole block and those next door would have gone. I hate to go all conspiracy minded but is the ammonium nitrate story a cover for say a weapons dump?

I could well be wrong.

The Oklahoma City bomb was estimated at about 2 tons equivalent of TNT and it took out a pretty large building, constructed to US federal procurement standards. 500 times that would make for a pretty big hole.

[Brightonian]

An analysis from Bellingcat, with tweets from their chief investigator @N_Waters89.

[Martin Y]

I read elsewhere that the distinctive red cloud is supportive of the claims that it was ammonium nitrate which exploded, and the stuff stockpiled was the seized cargo from an impounded ship which had been argued over for several years.

[Lew Dolby]

For comparison, there was a similar explosion at the AZF factory in Toulouse a couple of weeks after the Twin Towers attack in 2001.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZF_(factory)

[JQH]

An analysis from Bellingcat, with tweets from their chief investigator @N_Waters89.

f.ck. Did you see that video of the actual explosion taken from a balcony several hundred metres away. Still caught in the blast. I wonder if s/he survived?

[Grumble]

An analysis from Bellingcat, with tweets from their chief investigator @N_Waters89.

f.ck. Did you see that video of the actual explosion taken from a balcony several hundred metres away. Still caught in the blast. I wonder if s/he survived?

Presumably someone uploaded the video, or was it a section of a livestream?

[Boustrophedon]

Doesn't look like 1,000 odd tons to my uneducated eye. Yeah one explosion looks like another, it's just scale, but a 100 tons would take out the building next door and leave the rest of the city bashed but not demolished. 1,000 tons and the whole block and those next door would have gone. I hate to go all conspiracy minded but is the ammonium nitrate story a cover for say a weapons dump?

I could well be wrong.

The Oklahoma City bomb was estimated at about 2 tons equivalent of TNT and it took out a pretty large building, constructed to US federal procurement standards. 500 times that would make for a pretty big hole.

There is actually a pretty big hole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41CCFYOy6Ww

[Martin Y]

An analysis from Bellingcat, with tweets from their chief investigator @N_Waters89.

f.ck. Did you see that video of the actual explosion taken from a balcony several hundred metres away. Still caught in the blast. I wonder if s/he survived?

This one? https://streamable.com/xmmoa7

While they were very clearly in great danger of severe injury or death, the fact that their phone video of the event was shared within a short time makes me hopeful they weren't gravely hurt.

Makes you think, even after they've buried the dead and treated the injured, a large area of their city is going to be barely inhabitable for quite some time.

[Martin Y]

There is actually a pretty big hole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41CCFYOy6Ww

I assume the large reinforced concrete structure that partly survived is a grain silo. That's probably a significant loss of stored food.

And yes, that is a pretty damned big hole.

[AMS]

There is actually a pretty big hole.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41CCFYOy6Ww

I assume the large reinforced concrete structure that partly survived is a grain silo. That's probably a significant loss of stored food.

And yes, that is a pretty damned big hole.

I just watched an al Jazeera report that said it is Lebanon's main storage site for wheat, holding about 3 months' worth of the country's needs. Also that significant milling operations were nearby in the pory area. The port handles 80% of Lebanon's imports/exports.

[Woodchopper]

Tracing the explosives that tore the capital apart
Letters show officials knew of danger posed by ammonium nitrate cargo at Beirut port six years before deadly blast.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/ ... 16684.html

[AMS]

It looks like a few thousand tons of grain works pretty well as a shock absorber. The side of the silo nearest the blast has totally disintegrated, but the far side is more or less intact. I wonder how much it protected buildings further away in that direction.

[Gfamily]

An analysis from Bellingcat, with tweets from their chief investigator @N_Waters89.

f.ck. Did you see that video of the actual explosion taken from a balcony several hundred metres away. Still caught in the blast. I wonder if s/he survived?

If they were on a balcony they'll have been in a better position than people who would have been looking at the initial fire through a window.
And lots of people would have been doing that.

Reminds me of the Manchester bombing when people in my company were watching the police evacuation from a nearby office block window. Fortunately the glass didn't shatter, but the whole window frame was blown out of its frame and across the floor, which caused blunt force injuries rather than being cut by glass shards.

[AMS]

A view of the crater, from AFP twitter. I think that's the original line of the quayside in the bottom left.

[TimW]

It looks like a few thousand tons of grain works pretty well as a shock absorber. The side of the silo nearest the blast has totally disintegrated, but the far side is more or less intact. I wonder how much it protected buildings further away in that direction.

In this image there are buildings in the middle distance that look like they might have benefitted: