http://asbarez.com/195906/massive-explosion-in-beirut-damages-armenian-center/
Lebanon’s Interior Minister, Mohammad Fahmi, told a local Lebanese television that highly explosive ammonium nitrate, which has both industrial and military uses, was stored in the port. Reportedly, the substance was confiscated by the authorities years ago from a ship and was stored in the port.
So Oklahoma City was about 4 K lbs worth. I wonder if there is any way to find out how much was there.
aircooled said:Also.... that part of the world... I am a bit surprised there is much demand for recreational explosives (they tend to get a lot of the non-recreational type).
They have to be made SOMEwhere.
I grew up in the 80s, so i keep thinking "who thought a fireworks factory in Beirut was a good idea?". Then the conspiracy theorist i keep locked in the attic says "plausible deniability, man! 'Oh no someone broke in and stole 300 kilos of explosive materials'..."
Z31Maniac said: I saw one Twitter user say they thought it was a missile from a jet.
Wonder who was driving.
Some of the videos show a significant fire and many small explosions before the big blast (explains why so many were videoing a building when it blew up). That pretty well rules out the "missile" theory.
I heard reports of houses damaged 10 kilometers away. That's a lot of pressure wave.
Al-Arabiya news is reporting it was an ammunition warehouse owned by Hezbollah.
https://twitter.com/michaeldickson/status/1290717531389427722/photo/1
There seems to be a lot of "accidents" in that part of the world lately. Saw a news report the other day listing about a half dozen in Iran just in the past few weeks.
I saw some video from the ground on instagram. Its ugly. Few bodies shown in that video. Going to be a whole lot higher than 10 deaths.
In reply to TJL (Forum Supporter) :
It's already north of 30, I suspect it will end up in the hundreds.
z31maniac said:Al-Arabiya news is reporting it was an ammunition warehouse owned by Hezbollah.
https://twitter.com/michaeldickson/status/1290717531389427722/photo/1
I've never heard of that news source, but that sounds extremely plausible.
Holy Berk. That was a HUGE expolsion. If the Ammonium Nitrate reports are true, that was 100's of thousands of lbs??
In reply to tuna55 :
2700 tons seized in 2013 is what I heard, if that's accurate that would certainly explain the size of the boom.
In reply to mtn (Forum Supporter) :
It's owned by the Saudis, so eeeh
Holy crap.
I'm a commercial pyro tech and have seen a lotta safety seminar videos. That was a fireworks warehouse or factory or both, no question at all. You get losta lead-up of color and drama, and then the remaining stock says "that's it we've had it" and tons of low order display explosives turn from 1.3g to 1.1, detonate, and turn the facilities into a smoking crater in an instant.
In reply to Jay_W :
You'll never guess what they said was stored next to the large stockpile of ammonium nitrate.
Grizz said:In reply to Jay_W :
You'll never guess what they said was stored next to the large stockpile of ammonium nitrate.
diesel storage?
In reply to NOHOME :
Wouldn't surprise me, probably the next building over from the fireworks storage.
In reply to Jay_W :
That's the thing that I was thinking as well. In the army I saw lot's of high explosive bangs and they were more "crack" then they blew up. The Beirut kablooey was more of a "whump".
So large explosion to be sure, but kind of a low grade, slow moving one. Not military grade munitions.
President just called it "an attack" in a press briefing based on initial military analysis. Plot thickens, I guess.
EDIT: For the record, DO NOT flounder this thread. Just observing that the statement was made.
I took a shot from a frame of one of the videos. This the very initial moment of the explosion (the red of the actual detonation can be seen at the base). It shows a red cloud that was pushed up by the explosion. I don't think that is smoke, because it appears so quickly (?) Some form of Dust? A lot of something got pushed into the air very quickly.
Yeah I just saw the reports about 4 figure tonnage of ammonium nitrate stored next door. Scuse me but I'm thinkin that mighta been poor planning right there.
They just released some video from inside the "factory".
The investigation into what caused the explosion continues:
Yeah... that's less like "chinese fireworks plant went kaboom" and more like "Texas city disaster of 1947".... which was something like 2000 tons of ammonium nitrate. This Beirut pyro plant was just the fuse...
In reply to Mr_Asa :
If that map is even close to accurate, we're talking about something on the order of a good size nuclear device surface detonation, at least in terms of blast effect - considerably larger than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I'm in no way suggesting that it was such a device, but rather just pointing out that the blast effects are in that order of magnitude. And there appears to be some question of a chemical cloud as a result of the explosion as well.
02Pilot said:In reply to Mr_Asa :
If that map is even close to accurate, we're talking about something on the order of a good size nuclear device surface detonation, at least in terms of blast effect - considerably larger than Hiroshima or Nagasaki. I'm in no way suggesting that it was such a device, but rather just pointing out that the blast effects are in that order of magnitude. And there appears to be some question of a chemical cloud as a result of the explosion as well.
Someone (on Reddit, maybe?) did the math for 1000lbs of ammonium nitrate going up and if I remember correctly it was on the order of one of these https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W54
So if they had multiple thousands of pounds, I believe it.
In reply to Mr_Asa :
Latest I've been able to find suggests the initial fire was on a ship carrying fireworks, which then spread to the warehouse. The official figure is 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate, which, if accurate and it all went up, probably puts the blast effect as something in the neighborhood of 1Mt yield equivalent (for reference, Hiroshima was 15kt), which more or less squares with the radii shown on the map. Obviously there are differences - flash burns don't seem to be evident in most victims, for example, which would be widespread in a nuclear detonation - but strictly in terms of blast damage this is a hell of a shot.
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