28 ms·

Welders set off Beirut blast while securing explosives

632 points by tafda 6y ago

tunesmith 6y ago
Welders next to fireworks next to ammonium nitrate
- rock_hard 6y ago
  ...BOOM!
- zentiggr 6y ago
  That is one definition of tertiary explosive, set off by secondary explosive, set off by primary flame source... Ouch. I've done shipyard work. A lot of care was taken (on average) to ensure sparks and castoff didn't affect adjacent work even a couple of feet away. Causing a chain reaction in a warehouse? Damn.
- DataWorker 6y ago
  Surprised Epstein’s prison guards aren’t involved somehow.
- frankhhhhhhhhh 6y ago
  Reads like a cartoon to me.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
FillardMillmore 6y ago
I don't understand why they'd store a cache of fireworks next to a cache of ammonium nitrate. And what kind of rent-a-welder wouldn't be aware enough of their surroundings and the associated risks that they wouldn't properly secure the perimeter from sparks? I'm not the conspiratorial type, but it really does seem like there's some other information that we're not getting.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  "People did something dumb" hardly requires a conspiracy.
  - vmception 6y ago
    That's pretty much the prerequisite to all conspiracies: attributing to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
  - datameta 6y ago
    As the saying goes: Don't attritubute to malice that which could easily be attributed to stupidity
    - danesparza 6y ago
      Also known as "Hanlon's razor" :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
  - Animats 6y ago
    Huge ammonium nitrate explosions have happened too many times before.[1] Last big one in the US was in 2015 in Texas. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disasters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disas...
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  Beirut's government is notoriously dysfunctional and incompetent at the basic tasks of governance. When I was there some years back, there were huge protests precipitated by this incompetence, and that was half a decade ago. People tend to underestimate how much institutional capital is involved in basic governmental tasks running smoothly, even in a country as politically polarized and dysfunctional as, say, the US. It's very plausible to me that this was just a result of that incompetence.
  - spaetzleesser 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hprotagonist 6y ago
Welding without sufficient care can cause a lot of trouble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Boston_Brownstone_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Boston_Brownstone_fire I hadn't seen a fire go to 9 alarms before this one.
- pixl97 6y ago
  Really the welding was the thing that matters least in this case. The environment that was created was so incredibly dangerous, so incredibly negligent that practically anything involving a spark would have caused this incident. Fireworks near AN? Why not play Russian roulette with a single shot. Storing AN for 6 years? Madness.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    When storing 2,750 tons of AN inappropriately near other flammable materials, the question isn’t “why did it explode”, the question is “why didn’t it explode for 6 years?” This was bound to be the outcome eventually until someone got around to actually storing that stuff correctly. It seems a small batch of welders just finally drew the short straw.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  It seems silly to blame the spark, rather than the fuel. If there was a massive, undetected gas-leak that erupts into a fireball when a guy strikes a match, you don't blame the guy for the damage.
  - ip26 6y ago
    Yeah, but if there was a massive dry fuel load in the California mountains caused by a hundred years of poorly informed forest management strategy, and some hypothetical electrical utility sparked & burned it all down, then you do blame the spark!
- rectang 6y ago
  So what? The welders are an utterly inconsequential distraction from much more important lines of inquiry.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
Incompetence should never lead to a city exploding. Whose whats when where why so much nitrite?
- jagged-chisel 6y ago
  Ars Technica has an article [1] with some answers. 1 - https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/ripped-chemical-bags-added-to-risk-of-beirut-blast/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/ripped-chemical-bags...
jacquesm 6y ago
Welding, roof work, grinding. Those three are responsible for a good chunk of all fires. I've done quite a bit of all three and have to confess that once or twice I was lucky rather than smart to have no bad effects from a very small mistake. When grinding, all it takes is a rag used to degrease something days before at 30' to set it on fire. When welding you really want to keep a very good idea of what is on the other side of your weld at all times. Surprise: a box member of a car filled with PU foam. I really never saw that one coming. And finally, when working on a roof a friend of mine did not properly calculate in the effect of an exothermic reaction in a vat of resin exposed to the sun. Close call that one, averted by denying oxygen to the already burning vat. This one is on a completely different level though, and I'm sure that the welders did not live to tell the tale. Even so, before you go and claim they were stupid you have to take into account that this is Beirut, not exactly a place where the local OHSA is going to beat down the doors to ensure everything is done safely and by the book, that in a harbor there are always lots of dangerous things in close proximity and that they may have taken all possible precautions and still ended up drawing an unlucky card. It really doesn't take much.
- mindcrime 6y ago
  It really doesn't take much. It really doesn't. You don't even need a grinder. Oily rags can ignite spontaneously. People usually laugh at the phrase "spontaneous combustion" because it's so often associated with "spontaneous human combustion." But actual "spontaneous combustion" does happen in certain (not uncommon) circumstances. See: https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Public-Education/Resources/Safety-tip-sheets/OilyRagsSafetyTips.ashx https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Public-Education/Resource... And what makes things even scarier, is realizing that buildings, ships, etc. that are either under construction or undergoing maintenance are more "at risk" because alarm systems, automatic fire suppression systems (eg, sprinklers), etc. are often times not in place yet, or disabled, while work is going on. This is one reason it's so common to see a building complex that is under construction burn to the dirt if it catches fire, as opposed to a finished building where you might get a "room and contents" fire. No sheetrock, just miles and miles of exposed wood, no sprinklers, no alarm - recipe for disaster.
  - 6y ago
Gerardd 6y ago
We were 600 meters away from the blast walking peacefully in the popular Beirut street Mar Mikhael. The scale of the explosion was surreal [1]. I hugged my sister and thought it’s our last moment. We miraculously survived with only a few scratches. Ten days have passed and there’s not a single minute I don’t think of what happened and emulate different scenarios where I could’ve died. I also work at the most affected hospital that became instantly non-operational and had to be evacuated with over 17 patients, staff, and visitors dead [2]. Please consider donating [3]. [1] https://youtu.be/SkIYjNGiaoA https://youtu.be/SkIYjNGiaoA [2] https://youtu.be/JIxuwE_WPXw https://youtu.be/JIxuwE_WPXw [3] https://www.stgeorgehospital.org/stgeorge-donation https://www.stgeorgehospital.org/stgeorge-donation
- Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
  I'm sorry that you had to go through this. Is your house damaged? News reports showed several buildings which didn't bore the direct brunt of the blast have become structurally weakened by the shockwaves and that there are less chances that those buildings would be repaired. If you are living in such a building, it would be wise to move away to a safer building far away if possible.
  - Gerardd 6y ago
    Thank you. My house is 4km away and didn't sustain any damage. However other buildings within the same range had their glass shattered. The blast was even heard in Cyprus (234 km). NASA's ARIA team mapped the likely extent of damage: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-maps-beirut-blast-damage https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-maps-beirut-blast-dama... I also went up to the hospital's helipad today and can see the massive crater in direct sight: https://imgur.com/FAtIo4F https://imgur.com/FAtIo4F
    - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
      Glad that your house didn't suffer damage. Supposedly, more than 70,000 building have been damaged[1]. The news report also mentions that there is trouble withdrawing money from the banks and that the funds don't reach people. Can you please confirm that the hospital donation link can accept international funds and that the funds really reach to those who need it? [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEvcmQ8ObA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEvcmQ8ObA
rectang 6y ago
If the conclusion you reach is that welders should be scapegoated for blowing up Beirut, then you are either corrupt or cretinous. The real question is, why were the explosives there? But pursuing that question might make powerful people uncomfortable, or lead to less satisfying conclusions about institutions deliberately designed to disperse accountability.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > The real question is, why were the explosives there? In a highly structured and rule driven entity (government) what happens when a problem falls outside the set up structure? It tends to be ignored as nobody is responsible for dealing with it.
  - rectang 6y ago
    I've read numerous articles and although it seems lots of people knew the situation was dangerous and lots of letters flew back and forth, I'm still not clear on who had jurisdiction or failed to take action. The Port Authority? The courts? The Army? The General Directorate of State Security? This Reuters article is maddening, but it hits much closer to the truth than all the pointless "welding is dangerous" threads going on right now around us: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-documents-excl/exclusive-lebanons-leaders-warned-in-july-about-explosives-at-port-documents-idUSKCN2562L7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-do... The hypothesis I tend to reach for is a general lack of "good government", originating because the factional tension in Lebanon completely overshadows any other political differentiation. The factions can't compete on competence because votes are locked in by group identity.
    - Sharlin 6y ago
      > I've read numerous articles and although it seems lots of people knew the situation was dangerous and lots of letters flew back and forth, I'm still not clear on who had jurisdiction or failed to take action. That's exactly the problem. They weren't either.
    - 6y ago
sradman 6y ago
I noted the maintenance connection in a CNN article about a week ago on HN [1]. This “report” seems to skip the fire stage and the reports that fire fighters were on site and noted the oddity of the fire. > Maintenance was conducted on the warehouse door just hours before the blast on Tuesday, he added. This looks like a key piece of evidence. Warehouse door maintenance could have caused the fire seen at the start of the videos of the incident. Until more evidence is revealed I think “warehouse with 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate caught fire” is a good hypothesis. Coulda, shoulda, and speculating about motivations can come later. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069640
duxup 6y ago
Who organizes these welders? Whose job is it to check the site come up with a safe plan where / before the welders work? Maybe the welders should have known better, but there needs to be more between total disaster and welding than just some guys with welding tools who probably have little power to say no without consequences ...
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >Who organizes these welders? >Whose job is it to check the site come up with a safe plan where / before the welders work? Nobody does any of that. It's not a rich country. They simply can't afford that kind of overhead. Sure the welders could but they can't/won't do that if the rest of the economy/society normalizes it and normalizing that and the whole economy can't afford that. It sucks but that's just how it works. You gotta get rich before you can afford to care about worker safety and the environment. (Obviously it's not a hard cutoff, as you get richer you care more about each). Imagine the state of workplace safety in the US but in the 1950s. That's where they are right now.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
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dboreham 6y ago
Right up there with "checking if there's a gas leak with a candle".
- myself248 6y ago
  There once was a gas-man named Peter On a dark night, asearch for the meter Touched a leak with his light He arose out of sight And as anyone can tell by reading this, he also completely destroyed the meter.
LatteLazy 6y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions Interesting history on why there explosives were stored in the port in the first place...
olivermarks 6y ago
https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/who-profits-from-the-beirut-blast/ https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/who-profits-from-the-beirut-bl... an alternative perspective which has a level of detail and questions that has been missing from western media but is arguably from a hostile source
- olivermarks 6y ago
  non paywall link https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-profits-beirut-blast/5720678 https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-profits-beirut-blast/57206...
  - the-pigeon 6y ago
    Doesn't really say anything useful. It is just bringing up that various hostile parties could have known about the ammonium nitrate being there and had motivation to blow it up. Which yeah duh. But having the motivation and the means to do something is not evidence that you did it. The actual evidence completely lines up with the original post. Not to say we shouldn't consider the conspiracy theories just that this one like the others isn't supported by the evidence.
- jcranmer 6y ago
  I downvoted you because the article you link is basically insane conspiratorializing, based on the non-paywall link in the sibling comment. It doesn't even keep the conspiracy theories straight: * It was a plot by Russia to give explosives to Syria in a roundabout way [but it sits in Beirut for years despite being nominally in the hands of the people who are supposed to be delivering it?] * Israel blew it up with a secret missile/bomb/weapon thinking it was a Hezbollah weapons cache and only realized their mistake after too much went up [because hyper-competent spy agency somehow decides that the best way to take out a large amount of explosive that dominates the list of largest non-nuclear explosions is to blow it up, or maybe they somehow did the intel figuring there was a large weapons cache but couldn't figure out what it was?] * It's a US-France-Saudi conspiracy to seize control of the Lebanese economy and destroy the Chinese Belt-and-Road Initiative [that last bit comes out of nowhere actually].
llacb47 6y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-explosives http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
deadalus 6y ago
Archives : https://archive.is/vSiKi https://archive.is/vSiKi and https://web.archive.org/web/20200814174018/https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-explosives https://web.archive.org/web/20200814174018/https://www.marit...
- llacb47 6y ago
  http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-explosives http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
mabbo 6y ago
> Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. That sentence is nearly unbelievable, like something from a cartoon show. How much incompetence can you layer upon further incompetence to reach this insane level of danger?
- devwastaken 6y ago
  The CSB has a number of YouTube videos detailing how industrial accidents happen, and it's almost always flame, sparks, gasses, corrosion, and a fuel source. Nobody is going to get paid for being safe, few care about learning it,fewer are going to get paid teaching it, and few are going to be listened to. The "safe guy" is going to be the butt end of the jobs because they cost more, get it done slower, and aren't going to work on unsafe places. It's all about get it done and if someone dies that's the cost of doing business and that's on the worker.
  - frickinLasers 6y ago
    I think OP was referring to "fireworks stored next to ammonium nitrate." Fireworks are stupidly hazardous and should never be stored around high explosives. If the sparks had hit only the ammonium nitrate (because the fireworks had been properly disposed of or at least stored in a reasonable configuration), there's a good chance the fire would not have started.
  - bootlooped 6y ago
    I worked in a factory where some other employees seemed to view safety as something that is in direct opposition to masculinity. So that's another factor that contributes to it.
  - csours 6y ago
    A few selected videos to this point: Fireworks Disposal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rktMzw2fd28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rktMzw2fd28 City of West, TX fertilizer explosion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDuHxwD5R4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDuHxwD5R4 Hot Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWkcuR0adeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWkcuR0adeI
DC-3 6y ago
The first frame of that 1st video when the explosion hits is morbidly fascinating. The image looks almost as if it is pieced together from torn paper. https://i.imgur.com/1GkJgxt.png https://i.imgur.com/1GkJgxt.png
- gnulinux 6y ago
  Is this because shock wave compresses air and makes it refractive like water so it almost looks like there is a water droplet where the explosion originates?
  - DC-3 6y ago
    That feels plausible. I think the effect of shock on the camera sensor also plays a part.
    - 0-_-0 6y ago
      Seems like a combination of that and what seems like some algorithm performing temporal denoising on the video going haywire from the quick moving picture.
    - _ph_ 6y ago
      This looks like an early frame, a couple of seconds before the shock wave reaches the camera. That is why there are so many clear videos, as it takes a while for the shock wave to reach the observers - if you are 3 kilometers away, you have 10 seconds to watch the explosion, before it hits you. Camera sensors should also not generate artifacts due to shock, unless they fail. But what is possible, that very fast moving subjects create artifacts in the image due to the limited shutter speed.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    Yes. The air density changes rapidly depending on whether or not that slice of air was in the shadow of a building lengthening the path and attenuating the pressure change and it's rate of change.
- Gerardd 6y ago
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
> a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. Wow.
- techsin101 6y ago
  welding next to fireworks which is next to ammonium
umvi 6y ago
Seems like hot work causes lots of accidents. https://youtu.be/zWkcuR0adeI https://youtu.be/zWkcuR0adeI
- myself248 6y ago
  I would say, hot work reveals unsafe situations. Unsafe situations cause lots of accidents.
formalsystem 6y ago
Lebanese here Focusing on the direct cause of the blast is a huge distraction from understanding why the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate were stored in the middle of Beirut for 7 years. The president Aoun and his senior leadership were all aware of this problem but said they didn't have the authority to do anything about it. IMO, this is a hilariously bad argument that's deflecting who the most likely owner is. Aoun and his lackeys apparently have the authority to start a state of emergency and shoot protesters but don't have any such authority to prevent half of Beirut from being nuked. The director of the Beirut port Badri Daher has been running bazaar ever since he's been in that position, regularly stealing supplies from shipments, suing reporters for defamation and beating up investigative journalists. The port director also reports to the Amal party which is closely allied to Aouns.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the same building, next to a cache of fireworks, mind you. Corruption plays a part, but I'm astonished by the incompetence that's usually going hand in hand with the corruption. I'm surprised a catastrophe took 7 years to happen. You simply do not store that much fertilizer in a single place. And Brazil (Brazilian here) sent a diplomatic mission to help. It's lead by our very own Badri Daher, the previous vice president who threw a coup against the previous president.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Incompetence and corruption are often hand-in-hand. Corrupt governance often results in the appointment of (or support of in a corrupt-but-more-capitalist environment) sycophants who don't know anything about the thing they're in charge of. This leads to a degradation in the culture within whatever organization they're leading. At first it's small, experienced engineers or safety officers and the like will start leaving. But there's enough left. But then the money for maintenance and training diminishes over time, likely to someone's private bank account. After even just a few short years of this you'll have an incompetent organization. I've seen this play out, not just in governments, but in private enterprises as well. When you see a division's quality dropping, look to the top and see what they're doing and emphasizing and how they got that position.
Johnny555 6y ago
Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. Seems a little unfair to blame this solely on welders -- the root cause was whoever decided it was a good idea to store 2700 tons of explosive fertilizer so close to a city. Secondary is whoever decided it was a good idea to store fireworks in the warehouse that stored this explosive fertilizer. Last on the list is the welders that were told to work on this door near the fireworks and fertilizer.
- gorbachev 6y ago
  Forgot the people who thought it'd be a good idea to contract welders to do the work knowing what stored nearby.
- tim333 6y ago
  >explosive fertilizer Seems it may have been made for use as a straight explosive rather than fertilizer: https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1290795532701425664 https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/12907955327014256...
  - azernik 6y ago
    Note that this is specifically in a form factor made for mining explosives (i.e. to be mixed with oil at the worksite to make ANFO) - not necessarily very convenient for military use.
chromaton 6y ago
One thing I haven't heard about yet: who was paying for all that prime warehouse storage space all these years?
ghastmaster 6y ago
I ran across the image in this tweet of work being done on the door to the warehouse a couple hours after the blast. I presumed there was welding going on and this set off the fireworks which led to the blast. It amazes me how much information can be gathered in such a short time compared to just twenty years ago. The internet is wonderful. https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1290782284686266372 https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1290782284686266372 The repairs in the image are probably not the repair that caused the blast. That was my thought process though.
throw7 6y ago
"I am not responsible!" I'm hearing this a lot from multiple so called "leaders".
TimesOldRoman 6y ago
Does this make a case for pro-Federal-Government? What would a libertarian say about how a society would prevent these types of accidents?
fhub 6y ago
I think many people are picturing the firework fuse getting ignited by a spark. But it seems more plausible that the packaging/box caught fire igniting the fireworks inside. Perhaps the packing/boxes obscured the contents of the boxes.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Scarey that a judge ordered the detention of this material and kept it and kept it in a populated area for years despite multiple regular objections... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions
myth_buster 6y ago
> the port sent a team of Syrian workers to fix the warehouse Welder's nationality doesn't seem to me a relevant info to be included in a postmortem.
- keenmaster 6y ago
  We haven’t been told the race of the person who ordered the welding, the race of the judge who ordered that the nitrate stay on the port, the race of the people who put fireworks next to thousands of tons of highly explosive material in a dense city, etc... Someone is trying to make Syrian refugees into Girardian black sheep. This wouldn't be the first time. The irony is that Bashar Al Assad used nitrate-filled barrel bombs to decimate the Syrian people, and he is supported by Hezbollah and Iran, which have a huge influence in Lebanon. Their influence cannot be separated from the incompetence and corruption that led to the blast. Here's the really crazy part: some people are saying that a lot of the nitrate which was originally stored must have been smuggled out, because otherwise the blast would have been larger. If true, it wouldn't be surprising that the nitrate was smuggled for Assad to use in barrel bombs. Here's a list of barrel bombs dropped by the Syrian Air Force. That's a lot of nitrate...: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barrel_bomb_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barre...
  - kamel3d 6y ago
    just a correction Syrian is not a race Lebanese and Syrians or Jordanians are all arabs but you find different beleafe groups there, christians muslims (Shia and sunni and...) and more but most of them are Arabs if not all
- ahmedalsudani 6y ago
  The idea is to attach it to the correct group that the report authors (or the news outlet) want to have this blamed on. It’s a great political tool. Literally everything in some societies is part of the larger game. We are not immune in the west either, unfortunately.
majormunky 6y ago
"Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache." Huh..
george120 6y ago
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magwa101 6y ago
Good to understand the core reason for the explosion, incompetence.
SkyMarshal 6y ago
>Sparks from [the repair team's] welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. Oh wow, I was wondering what the white-ish sparkles were just prior to the explosion. It was the fireworks cache going off, which then ignited the 2750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate. That's an immense amount of Ammonium Nitrate. I suspect one outcome of this will be a new ordinance/law will that disallow such large caches of explosive material from being stored in the same place. Rather it will have to be divvied up and distributed to holding facilities out of blast range of each other.
doggydogs94 6y ago
Hezbollah does a pretty good job of staying out of the line of fire; even though I am sure they have helped themselves to some of the AN from time to time.
aaron695 6y ago
HN's hive mind will never get it but if it interests you here's a great write up of how this happened in Texas, deals with some of the government processes and creep too - https://youtu.be/pdDuHxwD5R4 https://youtu.be/pdDuHxwD5R4 CBS is a great resource that should be shown in high schools.
UnrealTriGGerZ 6y ago
We're not going to let a bunch of n1ggers upset the world! anti-bombs unite!!!! hack the plane7
rmason 6y ago
I worked in the fertilizer business and my company sold ammonium nitrate to farmers, mostly for use on potatoes. You need to use extreme care with this fertilizer. No one could purchase it (even before Oklahoma City) without us knowing them. After Oklahoma City some TV stations in Grand Rapids sent reporters undercover trying to make purchases and they failed. You need either dynamite or a substantial amount of heat to cause ammonium nitrate to explode. My boss tried to create a farm pond with it and his initial attempt failed. He failed to use enough dynamite ;<). Personally I'd nominate the Beirut Port Authority for a Darwin award. Without the fireworks being stored in the building the welders sparks wouldn't have caused the explosion.
davidgerard 6y ago
Reblog of original Reuters article from three days ago: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-documents-excl/exclusive-lebanons-leaders-warned-in-july-about-explosives-at-port-documents-idUSKCN2562L7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-do...
dcanelhas 6y ago
This news article reminds me of the beginning of the book "Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams.
beamatronic 6y ago
Who stores fireworks next to ammonium nitrate?
ChuckMcM 6y ago
I love the description, welders working over a pile of fireworks stored next to a ginormous pile of Ammonium Nitrate. So in many ways it really was a bomb, but one constructed by circumstance rather than intent.
TwoBit 6y ago
> "May God protect Lebanon" Well there's your problem mr. government official. You thought God was going to do your job for you.
bichiliad 6y ago
I’m having a hard time evaluating the credibility of this article. They mention “multiple sources,” but I can’t find any references. Can anyone find anything that vouches for the credibility of this report?
- sumedh 6y ago
  Maybe the source(s) want to remain confidential?
  - bichiliad 6y ago
    Possibly, but I’m surprised that this is the publication they’d choose to disclose such high-value information to.
ineedasername 6y ago
Wow, welding next to a firework cache stored next to highly explosive chemicals, a situation known about for years. There's really no need to appeal to the swiss cheese model here. This was not a series of otherwise low-risk events that came together at the wrong time. This was... I don't know, something like the opposite of that.
stevespang 6y ago
"I declare today the resignation of this government. May God protect Lebanon," Diab said in a televised statement. “This disaster is the result of chronic corruption. The corruption network is bigger than the state.” These last 2 sentences accurately describe the failed narco state of Mexico, whose cartels are devastating our country, it's time to declare a real war and clean up the mess below our border . . . .
matt-attack 6y ago
Can someone explain the “heat wave”-like distortion that the camera briefly experiences well before the blast wave seems to reach the building. How could an atmospheric effect make it to the camera at two different speeds? Not to be callous to the incredible tragedy at play, but I simply find this video to be mesmerizing in its quality and potency. In America we’re born and raised on countless explosions in pop culture whether it’s a Hollywood or gaming. They’re to the point of being so utterly mundane that it’s rare for Hollywood to wow an audience with a mere explosion anymore (though I could certainly name some memorable ones from over the years). We all now think we know what they look like in urban environments, and have for the last 30 years of high quality special effects. But. This video is real. And the details and nuances at play have simply never been depicted in film or tv before. To see the physics at play is simply mind boggling to me. I’d love to read a frame by frame account by a true expert of this 4K video.
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  I'm not sure which video you're referring to, but there are several things at play that can cause visual effects like you described. 1) The seismic wave travels through the ground much faster than the shockwave in the air, and will rattle the camera. Cameras with anti-shake technology will try to compensate, often badly, resulting in smeared or blurred images. 2) The visible expanding shell of vapor is not the shockwave, it is caused by condensation in the low pressure zone behind the shockwave. The shockwave itself is harder to see, but it is still visible as a distortion or slight blurring.
erie 6y ago
The reason that ship came to Beirut after all is very weird, there is reportedly a mysterious businessman who pretended that there was another shipment going to Jordan, that the ship could pick up on its way that would the ship owner who was unable to pay its crew, to get some money, but it turned out it was a ploy to lure the ship and take its AN shipment as a compensation for an old debt between that mystery businessman with the owner according to the marine agent.
coretx 6y ago
This story stinks because; -1- When you try to "weld" AN, it deflagrates at best. -2- There where 2 explosions to be heard and seen. First subsonic, followed by a supersonic one relatively much later. | -3-In order to detonate, not deflagrate AN, it needs to build up pressure. -4- When either a fireworks or AN storage facility is on fire; the first thing you do did not happen. -5- The explosion radius does not correspond to the presented narrative. -6- The measured earthquake does not correspond to the presented narrative. I can't tell you what did happen, but I can say we're all eating bullshit.
m3nu 6y ago
> Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. Wait. What?
hourislate 6y ago
It's incredible that 4Chan had a thread with pictures of a 3 men working on doors to the warehouse. They were welding them. This was within 24 hours of the explosion. Was going to post it here but then don't really think this board would appreciate 4chan threads... Picture... https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1596600309252.jpg https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1596600309252.jpg
tobyhinloopen 6y ago
Seriously? They were welding next to fireworks and explosives. Oh boy
azureel 6y ago
I think the main issue here is: budget. Lebanon is in severe economic crisis. And that effects everything, especially government spending. You say, "a demo expert should oversee storage of these stuff appropriately", well that means hiring an expert. Or "use a professional repair crew"; that means protective gear, removal of explosives around, special cold-welding equipment; and all these require budget. Hiring 2 immigrant welders for a week = 200 dollars (and I’m being extremely generous here). Versus taking all the security measures and use protective gear to do things right = 20.000 dollars. I believe there are more and more bad things on the way for Lebanon. A major electricity outage, or a leak in a chemical plant, or a bridge collapsing... All due to maintenance problems, might be just around the corner.
- ronyfadel 6y ago
  AN has been stored since 2013, economic crisis hit in late 2019. 20,000 dollars is nothing for the port authority, and the cost of storing the 2755 tons of AN in prime commercial real estate (Beirut port) is much higher to the cost of disposing it. The issue is corruption, ignorance, apathy, lack of good governance.
feralimal 6y ago
This will be an unpopular comment, but how do we know that what you say is true? Should we really accept what you say? Why do you want people to donate? Are you trying to write yourself into the story, bring in your 'sister' along with telling us about death? My view is that I appreciate people witnessing what they experienced. That's a service to humanity. But when you are playing with others heart strings, start witnessing deaths you haven't seen (the 2 visitors) and make a call for donations, I feel manipulated.
- yqx 6y ago
  I really don't see how it matters. It is this specific comment that is going to "manipulate" you into donating? The disaster happened. Stories as told in this comment happened. The hospital exists, it was severely damaged. In that context, does it really matter whether this person is speaking the truth?
  - feralimal 6y ago
    Its not that its going to manipulate me into donating. Its that this sort of action does not ring true. Even if raising funds via 'go fund me' etc is what is purported to happen in many of these events. If you were involved in an accident of some sort say a car crash, would you say that people should donate to some-cause on account of having heard your story? Would you leverage this event in that way? And if you did, wouldn't you provide some actual evidence that you were there, rather than a couple of links to generic news clips? Surely the bar needs to be a little higher for us to buy into this stuff....
    - ficklepickle 6y ago
      Regardless, this explosion happened and there are many human beings in distress. That alone would be enough reason to donate. If I was in a car crash, I would not ask people to donate. This is different, this is a humanitarian crisis, and he is not soliciting donations for himself but rather the hospital. I'm all for questioning things, but come on. There's a giant freaking crater in the ground. And you think, what exactly? This is a grand conspiracy to get you to donate a few dollars. I'm sorry but that doesn't make sense.
shrimpx 6y ago
They store a pile of fireworks next to 2700 tons of explosive materials, then they send in people to make sparks right next to the fireworks.
kidintech 6y ago
473 comments, 0 mentions of Rafic Hariri or Hezbollah. HN, I really had higher expectations.
pizza234 6y ago
There's something I don't get in this story. Based on Wikipedia/Aljazeera: Customs officials had sent letters to judges requesting a resolution to the issu e of the confiscated cargo, proposing that the ammonium nitrate be either export ed, given to the army, or sold to the private Lebanese Explosives Company. Lette rs had been sent on [...]. One of the letters sent in 2016 noted that judges had not replied to previous requests Have the authorities been so indolent that they avoided "doing some paperwork", and indirectly causing a catastrophe, or the proposal of selling the material was not realistic?
jbirer 6y ago
I call bad attempt at cover-up. The government is trying to redirect the anger to "welders" because there is growing anger towards the ruling class.

632 points by tafda 6y ago

tunesmith 6y ago

Welders next to fireworks next to ammonium nitrate

rock_hard 6y ago
...BOOM!
zentiggr 6y ago
That is one definition of tertiary explosive, set off by secondary explosive, set off by primary flame source... Ouch. I've done shipyard work. A lot of care was taken (on average) to ensure sparks and castoff didn't affect adjacent work even a couple of feet away. Causing a chain reaction in a warehouse? Damn.
DataWorker 6y ago
Surprised Epstein’s prison guards aren’t involved somehow.
frankhhhhhhhhh 6y ago
Reads like a cartoon to me.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

FillardMillmore 6y ago

I don't understand why they'd store a cache of fireworks next to a cache of ammonium nitrate. And what kind of rent-a-welder wouldn't be aware enough of their surroundings and the associated risks that they wouldn't properly secure the perimeter from sparks? I'm not the conspiratorial type, but it really does seem like there's some other information that we're not getting.

ceejayoz 6y ago
"People did something dumb" hardly requires a conspiracy.
- vmception 6y ago
  That's pretty much the prerequisite to all conspiracies: attributing to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
- datameta 6y ago
  As the saying goes: Don't attritubute to malice that which could easily be attributed to stupidity
  - danesparza 6y ago
    Also known as "Hanlon's razor" :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
- Animats 6y ago
  Huge ammonium nitrate explosions have happened too many times before.[1] Last big one in the US was in 2015 in Texas. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disasters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disas...
wutbrodo 6y ago
Beirut's government is notoriously dysfunctional and incompetent at the basic tasks of governance. When I was there some years back, there were huge protests precipitated by this incompetence, and that was half a decade ago. People tend to underestimate how much institutional capital is involved in basic governmental tasks running smoothly, even in a country as politically polarized and dysfunctional as, say, the US. It's very plausible to me that this was just a result of that incompetence.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hprotagonist 6y ago

Welding without sufficient care can cause a lot of trouble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Boston_Brownstone_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Boston_Brownstone_fire I hadn't seen a fire go to 9 alarms before this one.

pixl97 6y ago
Really the welding was the thing that matters least in this case. The environment that was created was so incredibly dangerous, so incredibly negligent that practically anything involving a spark would have caused this incident. Fireworks near AN? Why not play Russian roulette with a single shot. Storing AN for 6 years? Madness.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  When storing 2,750 tons of AN inappropriately near other flammable materials, the question isn’t “why did it explode”, the question is “why didn’t it explode for 6 years?” This was bound to be the outcome eventually until someone got around to actually storing that stuff correctly. It seems a small batch of welders just finally drew the short straw.
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
It seems silly to blame the spark, rather than the fuel. If there was a massive, undetected gas-leak that erupts into a fireball when a guy strikes a match, you don't blame the guy for the damage.
- ip26 6y ago
  Yeah, but if there was a massive dry fuel load in the California mountains caused by a hundred years of poorly informed forest management strategy, and some hypothetical electrical utility sparked & burned it all down, then you do blame the spark!
rectang 6y ago
So what? The welders are an utterly inconsequential distraction from much more important lines of inquiry.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

Incompetence should never lead to a city exploding. Whose whats when where why so much nitrite?

jagged-chisel 6y ago
Ars Technica has an article [1] with some answers. 1 - https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/ripped-chemical-bags-added-to-risk-of-beirut-blast/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/ripped-chemical-bags...

jacquesm 6y ago

Welding, roof work, grinding. Those three are responsible for a good chunk of all fires. I've done quite a bit of all three and have to confess that once or twice I was lucky rather than smart to have no bad effects from a very small mistake. When grinding, all it takes is a rag used to degrease something days before at 30' to set it on fire. When welding you really want to keep a very good idea of what is on the other side of your weld at all times. Surprise: a box member of a car filled with PU foam. I really never saw that one coming. And finally, when working on a roof a friend of mine did not properly calculate in the effect of an exothermic reaction in a vat of resin exposed to the sun. Close call that one, averted by denying oxygen to the already burning vat. This one is on a completely different level though, and I'm sure that the welders did not live to tell the tale. Even so, before you go and claim they were stupid you have to take into account that this is Beirut, not exactly a place where the local OHSA is going to beat down the doors to ensure everything is done safely and by the book, that in a harbor there are always lots of dangerous things in close proximity and that they may have taken all possible precautions and still ended up drawing an unlucky card. It really doesn't take much.

mindcrime 6y ago
It really doesn't take much. It really doesn't. You don't even need a grinder. Oily rags can ignite spontaneously. People usually laugh at the phrase "spontaneous combustion" because it's so often associated with "spontaneous human combustion." But actual "spontaneous combustion" does happen in certain (not uncommon) circumstances. See: https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Public-Education/Resources/Safety-tip-sheets/OilyRagsSafetyTips.ashx https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Public-Education/Resource... And what makes things even scarier, is realizing that buildings, ships, etc. that are either under construction or undergoing maintenance are more "at risk" because alarm systems, automatic fire suppression systems (eg, sprinklers), etc. are often times not in place yet, or disabled, while work is going on. This is one reason it's so common to see a building complex that is under construction burn to the dirt if it catches fire, as opposed to a finished building where you might get a "room and contents" fire. No sheetrock, just miles and miles of exposed wood, no sprinklers, no alarm - recipe for disaster.
- 6y ago

Gerardd 6y ago

We were 600 meters away from the blast walking peacefully in the popular Beirut street Mar Mikhael. The scale of the explosion was surreal [1]. I hugged my sister and thought it’s our last moment. We miraculously survived with only a few scratches. Ten days have passed and there’s not a single minute I don’t think of what happened and emulate different scenarios where I could’ve died. I also work at the most affected hospital that became instantly non-operational and had to be evacuated with over 17 patients, staff, and visitors dead [2]. Please consider donating [3]. [1] https://youtu.be/SkIYjNGiaoA https://youtu.be/SkIYjNGiaoA [2] https://youtu.be/JIxuwE_WPXw https://youtu.be/JIxuwE_WPXw [3] https://www.stgeorgehospital.org/stgeorge-donation https://www.stgeorgehospital.org/stgeorge-donation

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
I'm sorry that you had to go through this. Is your house damaged? News reports showed several buildings which didn't bore the direct brunt of the blast have become structurally weakened by the shockwaves and that there are less chances that those buildings would be repaired. If you are living in such a building, it would be wise to move away to a safer building far away if possible.
- Gerardd 6y ago
  Thank you. My house is 4km away and didn't sustain any damage. However other buildings within the same range had their glass shattered. The blast was even heard in Cyprus (234 km). NASA's ARIA team mapped the likely extent of damage: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-maps-beirut-blast-damage https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-maps-beirut-blast-dama... I also went up to the hospital's helipad today and can see the massive crater in direct sight: https://imgur.com/FAtIo4F https://imgur.com/FAtIo4F
  - Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
    Glad that your house didn't suffer damage. Supposedly, more than 70,000 building have been damaged[1]. The news report also mentions that there is trouble withdrawing money from the banks and that the funds don't reach people. Can you please confirm that the hospital donation link can accept international funds and that the funds really reach to those who need it? [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEvcmQ8ObA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEvcmQ8ObA

rectang 6y ago

If the conclusion you reach is that welders should be scapegoated for blowing up Beirut, then you are either corrupt or cretinous. The real question is, why were the explosives there? But pursuing that question might make powerful people uncomfortable, or lead to less satisfying conclusions about institutions deliberately designed to disperse accountability.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> The real question is, why were the explosives there? In a highly structured and rule driven entity (government) what happens when a problem falls outside the set up structure? It tends to be ignored as nobody is responsible for dealing with it.
- rectang 6y ago
  I've read numerous articles and although it seems lots of people knew the situation was dangerous and lots of letters flew back and forth, I'm still not clear on who had jurisdiction or failed to take action. The Port Authority? The courts? The Army? The General Directorate of State Security? This Reuters article is maddening, but it hits much closer to the truth than all the pointless "welding is dangerous" threads going on right now around us: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-documents-excl/exclusive-lebanons-leaders-warned-in-july-about-explosives-at-port-documents-idUSKCN2562L7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-do... The hypothesis I tend to reach for is a general lack of "good government", originating because the factional tension in Lebanon completely overshadows any other political differentiation. The factions can't compete on competence because votes are locked in by group identity.
  - Sharlin 6y ago
    > I've read numerous articles and although it seems lots of people knew the situation was dangerous and lots of letters flew back and forth, I'm still not clear on who had jurisdiction or failed to take action. That's exactly the problem. They weren't either.
  - 6y ago

sradman 6y ago

I noted the maintenance connection in a CNN article about a week ago on HN [1]. This “report” seems to skip the fire stage and the reports that fire fighters were on site and noted the oddity of the fire. > Maintenance was conducted on the warehouse door just hours before the blast on Tuesday, he added. This looks like a key piece of evidence. Warehouse door maintenance could have caused the fire seen at the start of the videos of the incident. Until more evidence is revealed I think “warehouse with 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate caught fire” is a good hypothesis. Coulda, shoulda, and speculating about motivations can come later. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069640

duxup 6y ago

Who organizes these welders? Whose job is it to check the site come up with a safe plan where / before the welders work? Maybe the welders should have known better, but there needs to be more between total disaster and welding than just some guys with welding tools who probably have little power to say no without consequences ...

throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>Who organizes these welders? >Whose job is it to check the site come up with a safe plan where / before the welders work? Nobody does any of that. It's not a rich country. They simply can't afford that kind of overhead. Sure the welders could but they can't/won't do that if the rest of the economy/society normalizes it and normalizing that and the whole economy can't afford that. It sucks but that's just how it works. You gotta get rich before you can afford to care about worker safety and the environment. (Obviously it's not a hard cutoff, as you get richer you care more about each). Imagine the state of workplace safety in the US but in the 1950s. That's where they are right now.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

dboreham 6y ago

Right up there with "checking if there's a gas leak with a candle".

myself248 6y ago
There once was a gas-man named Peter On a dark night, asearch for the meter Touched a leak with his light He arose out of sight And as anyone can tell by reading this, he also completely destroyed the meter.

LatteLazy 6y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions Interesting history on why there explosives were stored in the port in the first place...

olivermarks 6y ago

https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/who-profits-from-the-beirut-blast/ https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/who-profits-from-the-beirut-bl... an alternative perspective which has a level of detail and questions that has been missing from western media but is arguably from a hostile source

olivermarks 6y ago
non paywall link https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-profits-beirut-blast/5720678 https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-profits-beirut-blast/57206...
- the-pigeon 6y ago
  Doesn't really say anything useful. It is just bringing up that various hostile parties could have known about the ammonium nitrate being there and had motivation to blow it up. Which yeah duh. But having the motivation and the means to do something is not evidence that you did it. The actual evidence completely lines up with the original post. Not to say we shouldn't consider the conspiracy theories just that this one like the others isn't supported by the evidence.
jcranmer 6y ago
I downvoted you because the article you link is basically insane conspiratorializing, based on the non-paywall link in the sibling comment. It doesn't even keep the conspiracy theories straight: * It was a plot by Russia to give explosives to Syria in a roundabout way [but it sits in Beirut for years despite being nominally in the hands of the people who are supposed to be delivering it?] * Israel blew it up with a secret missile/bomb/weapon thinking it was a Hezbollah weapons cache and only realized their mistake after too much went up [because hyper-competent spy agency somehow decides that the best way to take out a large amount of explosive that dominates the list of largest non-nuclear explosions is to blow it up, or maybe they somehow did the intel figuring there was a large weapons cache but couldn't figure out what it was?] * It's a US-France-Saudi conspiracy to seize control of the Lebanese economy and destroy the Chinese Belt-and-Road Initiative [that last bit comes out of nowhere actually].

llacb47 6y ago

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-explosives http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

deadalus 6y ago

Archives : https://archive.is/vSiKi https://archive.is/vSiKi and https://web.archive.org/web/20200814174018/https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-explosives https://web.archive.org/web/20200814174018/https://www.marit...

llacb47 6y ago
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/report-welders-set-off-the-beirut-blast-while-securing-explosives http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...

mabbo 6y ago

> Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. That sentence is nearly unbelievable, like something from a cartoon show. How much incompetence can you layer upon further incompetence to reach this insane level of danger?

devwastaken 6y ago
The CSB has a number of YouTube videos detailing how industrial accidents happen, and it's almost always flame, sparks, gasses, corrosion, and a fuel source. Nobody is going to get paid for being safe, few care about learning it,fewer are going to get paid teaching it, and few are going to be listened to. The "safe guy" is going to be the butt end of the jobs because they cost more, get it done slower, and aren't going to work on unsafe places. It's all about get it done and if someone dies that's the cost of doing business and that's on the worker.
- frickinLasers 6y ago
  I think OP was referring to "fireworks stored next to ammonium nitrate." Fireworks are stupidly hazardous and should never be stored around high explosives. If the sparks had hit only the ammonium nitrate (because the fireworks had been properly disposed of or at least stored in a reasonable configuration), there's a good chance the fire would not have started.
- bootlooped 6y ago
  I worked in a factory where some other employees seemed to view safety as something that is in direct opposition to masculinity. So that's another factor that contributes to it.
- csours 6y ago
  A few selected videos to this point: Fireworks Disposal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rktMzw2fd28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rktMzw2fd28 City of West, TX fertilizer explosion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDuHxwD5R4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDuHxwD5R4 Hot Work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWkcuR0adeI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWkcuR0adeI

DC-3 6y ago

The first frame of that 1st video when the explosion hits is morbidly fascinating. The image looks almost as if it is pieced together from torn paper. https://i.imgur.com/1GkJgxt.png https://i.imgur.com/1GkJgxt.png

gnulinux 6y ago
Is this because shock wave compresses air and makes it refractive like water so it almost looks like there is a water droplet where the explosion originates?
- DC-3 6y ago
  That feels plausible. I think the effect of shock on the camera sensor also plays a part.
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    Seems like a combination of that and what seems like some algorithm performing temporal denoising on the video going haywire from the quick moving picture.
  - _ph_ 6y ago
    This looks like an early frame, a couple of seconds before the shock wave reaches the camera. That is why there are so many clear videos, as it takes a while for the shock wave to reach the observers - if you are 3 kilometers away, you have 10 seconds to watch the explosion, before it hits you. Camera sensors should also not generate artifacts due to shock, unless they fail. But what is possible, that very fast moving subjects create artifacts in the image due to the limited shutter speed.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Yes. The air density changes rapidly depending on whether or not that slice of air was in the shadow of a building lengthening the path and attenuating the pressure change and it's rate of change.
Gerardd 6y ago

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

> a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. Wow.

techsin101 6y ago
welding next to fireworks which is next to ammonium

umvi 6y ago

Seems like hot work causes lots of accidents. https://youtu.be/zWkcuR0adeI https://youtu.be/zWkcuR0adeI

myself248 6y ago
I would say, hot work reveals unsafe situations. Unsafe situations cause lots of accidents.

formalsystem 6y ago

Lebanese here Focusing on the direct cause of the blast is a huge distraction from understanding why the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate were stored in the middle of Beirut for 7 years. The president Aoun and his senior leadership were all aware of this problem but said they didn't have the authority to do anything about it. IMO, this is a hilariously bad argument that's deflecting who the most likely owner is. Aoun and his lackeys apparently have the authority to start a state of emergency and shoot protesters but don't have any such authority to prevent half of Beirut from being nuked. The director of the Beirut port Badri Daher has been running bazaar ever since he's been in that position, regularly stealing supplies from shipments, suing reporters for defamation and beating up investigative journalists. The port director also reports to the Amal party which is closely allied to Aouns.

rbanffy 6y ago
2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the same building, next to a cache of fireworks, mind you. Corruption plays a part, but I'm astonished by the incompetence that's usually going hand in hand with the corruption. I'm surprised a catastrophe took 7 years to happen. You simply do not store that much fertilizer in a single place. And Brazil (Brazilian here) sent a diplomatic mission to help. It's lead by our very own Badri Daher, the previous vice president who threw a coup against the previous president.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Incompetence and corruption are often hand-in-hand. Corrupt governance often results in the appointment of (or support of in a corrupt-but-more-capitalist environment) sycophants who don't know anything about the thing they're in charge of. This leads to a degradation in the culture within whatever organization they're leading. At first it's small, experienced engineers or safety officers and the like will start leaving. But there's enough left. But then the money for maintenance and training diminishes over time, likely to someone's private bank account. After even just a few short years of this you'll have an incompetent organization. I've seen this play out, not just in governments, but in private enterprises as well. When you see a division's quality dropping, look to the top and see what they're doing and emphasizing and how they got that position.

Johnny555 6y ago

Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. Seems a little unfair to blame this solely on welders -- the root cause was whoever decided it was a good idea to store 2700 tons of explosive fertilizer so close to a city. Secondary is whoever decided it was a good idea to store fireworks in the warehouse that stored this explosive fertilizer. Last on the list is the welders that were told to work on this door near the fireworks and fertilizer.

gorbachev 6y ago
Forgot the people who thought it'd be a good idea to contract welders to do the work knowing what stored nearby.
tim333 6y ago
>explosive fertilizer Seems it may have been made for use as a straight explosive rather than fertilizer: https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/1290795532701425664 https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/12907955327014256...
- azernik 6y ago
  Note that this is specifically in a form factor made for mining explosives (i.e. to be mixed with oil at the worksite to make ANFO) - not necessarily very convenient for military use.

chromaton 6y ago

One thing I haven't heard about yet: who was paying for all that prime warehouse storage space all these years?

ghastmaster 6y ago

I ran across the image in this tweet of work being done on the door to the warehouse a couple hours after the blast. I presumed there was welding going on and this set off the fireworks which led to the blast. It amazes me how much information can be gathered in such a short time compared to just twenty years ago. The internet is wonderful. https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1290782284686266372 https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1290782284686266372 The repairs in the image are probably not the repair that caused the blast. That was my thought process though.

throw7 6y ago

"I am not responsible!" I'm hearing this a lot from multiple so called "leaders".

TimesOldRoman 6y ago

Does this make a case for pro-Federal-Government? What would a libertarian say about how a society would prevent these types of accidents?

fhub 6y ago

I think many people are picturing the firework fuse getting ignited by a spark. But it seems more plausible that the packaging/box caught fire igniting the fireworks inside. Perhaps the packing/boxes obscured the contents of the boxes.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Scarey that a judge ordered the detention of this material and kept it and kept it in a populated area for years despite multiple regular objections... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions

myth_buster 6y ago

> the port sent a team of Syrian workers to fix the warehouse Welder's nationality doesn't seem to me a relevant info to be included in a postmortem.

keenmaster 6y ago
We haven’t been told the race of the person who ordered the welding, the race of the judge who ordered that the nitrate stay on the port, the race of the people who put fireworks next to thousands of tons of highly explosive material in a dense city, etc... Someone is trying to make Syrian refugees into Girardian black sheep. This wouldn't be the first time. The irony is that Bashar Al Assad used nitrate-filled barrel bombs to decimate the Syrian people, and he is supported by Hezbollah and Iran, which have a huge influence in Lebanon. Their influence cannot be separated from the incompetence and corruption that led to the blast. Here's the really crazy part: some people are saying that a lot of the nitrate which was originally stored must have been smuggled out, because otherwise the blast would have been larger. If true, it wouldn't be surprising that the nitrate was smuggled for Assad to use in barrel bombs. Here's a list of barrel bombs dropped by the Syrian Air Force. That's a lot of nitrate...: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barrel_bomb_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barre...
- kamel3d 6y ago
  just a correction Syrian is not a race Lebanese and Syrians or Jordanians are all arabs but you find different beleafe groups there, christians muslims (Shia and sunni and...) and more but most of them are Arabs if not all
ahmedalsudani 6y ago
The idea is to attach it to the correct group that the report authors (or the news outlet) want to have this blamed on. It’s a great political tool. Literally everything in some societies is part of the larger game. We are not immune in the west either, unfortunately.

majormunky 6y ago

"Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache." Huh..

george120 6y ago

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magwa101 6y ago

Good to understand the core reason for the explosion, incompetence.

SkyMarshal 6y ago

>Sparks from [the repair team's] welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. Oh wow, I was wondering what the white-ish sparkles were just prior to the explosion. It was the fireworks cache going off, which then ignited the 2750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate. That's an immense amount of Ammonium Nitrate. I suspect one outcome of this will be a new ordinance/law will that disallow such large caches of explosive material from being stored in the same place. Rather it will have to be divvied up and distributed to holding facilities out of blast range of each other.

doggydogs94 6y ago

Hezbollah does a pretty good job of staying out of the line of fire; even though I am sure they have helped themselves to some of the AN from time to time.

aaron695 6y ago

HN's hive mind will never get it but if it interests you here's a great write up of how this happened in Texas, deals with some of the government processes and creep too - https://youtu.be/pdDuHxwD5R4 https://youtu.be/pdDuHxwD5R4 CBS is a great resource that should be shown in high schools.

UnrealTriGGerZ 6y ago

We're not going to let a bunch of n1ggers upset the world! anti-bombs unite!!!! hack the plane7

rmason 6y ago

I worked in the fertilizer business and my company sold ammonium nitrate to farmers, mostly for use on potatoes. You need to use extreme care with this fertilizer. No one could purchase it (even before Oklahoma City) without us knowing them. After Oklahoma City some TV stations in Grand Rapids sent reporters undercover trying to make purchases and they failed. You need either dynamite or a substantial amount of heat to cause ammonium nitrate to explode. My boss tried to create a farm pond with it and his initial attempt failed. He failed to use enough dynamite ;<). Personally I'd nominate the Beirut Port Authority for a Darwin award. Without the fireworks being stored in the building the welders sparks wouldn't have caused the explosion.

davidgerard 6y ago

Reblog of original Reuters article from three days ago: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-documents-excl/exclusive-lebanons-leaders-warned-in-july-about-explosives-at-port-documents-idUSKCN2562L7 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-do...

dcanelhas 6y ago

This news article reminds me of the beginning of the book "Mostly Harmless" by Douglas Adams.

beamatronic 6y ago

Who stores fireworks next to ammonium nitrate?

ChuckMcM 6y ago

I love the description, welders working over a pile of fireworks stored next to a ginormous pile of Ammonium Nitrate. So in many ways it really was a bomb, but one constructed by circumstance rather than intent.

TwoBit 6y ago

> "May God protect Lebanon" Well there's your problem mr. government official. You thought God was going to do your job for you.

bichiliad 6y ago

I’m having a hard time evaluating the credibility of this article. They mention “multiple sources,” but I can’t find any references. Can anyone find anything that vouches for the credibility of this report?

sumedh 6y ago
Maybe the source(s) want to remain confidential?
- bichiliad 6y ago
  Possibly, but I’m surprised that this is the publication they’d choose to disclose such high-value information to.

ineedasername 6y ago

Wow, welding next to a firework cache stored next to highly explosive chemicals, a situation known about for years. There's really no need to appeal to the swiss cheese model here. This was not a series of otherwise low-risk events that came together at the wrong time. This was... I don't know, something like the opposite of that.

stevespang 6y ago

"I declare today the resignation of this government. May God protect Lebanon," Diab said in a televised statement. “This disaster is the result of chronic corruption. The corruption network is bigger than the state.” These last 2 sentences accurately describe the failed narco state of Mexico, whose cartels are devastating our country, it's time to declare a real war and clean up the mess below our border . . . .

matt-attack 6y ago

Can someone explain the “heat wave”-like distortion that the camera briefly experiences well before the blast wave seems to reach the building. How could an atmospheric effect make it to the camera at two different speeds? Not to be callous to the incredible tragedy at play, but I simply find this video to be mesmerizing in its quality and potency. In America we’re born and raised on countless explosions in pop culture whether it’s a Hollywood or gaming. They’re to the point of being so utterly mundane that it’s rare for Hollywood to wow an audience with a mere explosion anymore (though I could certainly name some memorable ones from over the years). We all now think we know what they look like in urban environments, and have for the last 30 years of high quality special effects. But. This video is real. And the details and nuances at play have simply never been depicted in film or tv before. To see the physics at play is simply mind boggling to me. I’d love to read a frame by frame account by a true expert of this 4K video.

jiggawatts 6y ago
I'm not sure which video you're referring to, but there are several things at play that can cause visual effects like you described. 1) The seismic wave travels through the ground much faster than the shockwave in the air, and will rattle the camera. Cameras with anti-shake technology will try to compensate, often badly, resulting in smeared or blurred images. 2) The visible expanding shell of vapor is not the shockwave, it is caused by condensation in the low pressure zone behind the shockwave. The shockwave itself is harder to see, but it is still visible as a distortion or slight blurring.

erie 6y ago

The reason that ship came to Beirut after all is very weird, there is reportedly a mysterious businessman who pretended that there was another shipment going to Jordan, that the ship could pick up on its way that would the ship owner who was unable to pay its crew, to get some money, but it turned out it was a ploy to lure the ship and take its AN shipment as a compensation for an old debt between that mystery businessman with the owner according to the marine agent.

coretx 6y ago

This story stinks because; -1- When you try to "weld" AN, it deflagrates at best. -2- There where 2 explosions to be heard and seen. First subsonic, followed by a supersonic one relatively much later. | -3-In order to detonate, not deflagrate AN, it needs to build up pressure. -4- When either a fireworks or AN storage facility is on fire; the first thing you do did not happen. -5- The explosion radius does not correspond to the presented narrative. -6- The measured earthquake does not correspond to the presented narrative. I can't tell you what did happen, but I can say we're all eating bullshit.

m3nu 6y ago

> Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache. Wait. What?

hourislate 6y ago

It's incredible that 4Chan had a thread with pictures of a 3 men working on doors to the warehouse. They were welding them. This was within 24 hours of the explosion. Was going to post it here but then don't really think this board would appreciate 4chan threads... Picture... https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1596600309252.jpg https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1596600309252.jpg

tobyhinloopen 6y ago

Seriously? They were welding next to fireworks and explosives. Oh boy

azureel 6y ago

I think the main issue here is: budget. Lebanon is in severe economic crisis. And that effects everything, especially government spending. You say, "a demo expert should oversee storage of these stuff appropriately", well that means hiring an expert. Or "use a professional repair crew"; that means protective gear, removal of explosives around, special cold-welding equipment; and all these require budget. Hiring 2 immigrant welders for a week = 200 dollars (and I’m being extremely generous here). Versus taking all the security measures and use protective gear to do things right = 20.000 dollars. I believe there are more and more bad things on the way for Lebanon. A major electricity outage, or a leak in a chemical plant, or a bridge collapsing... All due to maintenance problems, might be just around the corner.

ronyfadel 6y ago
AN has been stored since 2013, economic crisis hit in late 2019. 20,000 dollars is nothing for the port authority, and the cost of storing the 2755 tons of AN in prime commercial real estate (Beirut port) is much higher to the cost of disposing it. The issue is corruption, ignorance, apathy, lack of good governance.

feralimal 6y ago

This will be an unpopular comment, but how do we know that what you say is true? Should we really accept what you say? Why do you want people to donate? Are you trying to write yourself into the story, bring in your 'sister' along with telling us about death? My view is that I appreciate people witnessing what they experienced. That's a service to humanity. But when you are playing with others heart strings, start witnessing deaths you haven't seen (the 2 visitors) and make a call for donations, I feel manipulated.

yqx 6y ago
I really don't see how it matters. It is this specific comment that is going to "manipulate" you into donating? The disaster happened. Stories as told in this comment happened. The hospital exists, it was severely damaged. In that context, does it really matter whether this person is speaking the truth?
- feralimal 6y ago
  Its not that its going to manipulate me into donating. Its that this sort of action does not ring true. Even if raising funds via 'go fund me' etc is what is purported to happen in many of these events. If you were involved in an accident of some sort say a car crash, would you say that people should donate to some-cause on account of having heard your story? Would you leverage this event in that way? And if you did, wouldn't you provide some actual evidence that you were there, rather than a couple of links to generic news clips? Surely the bar needs to be a little higher for us to buy into this stuff....
  - ficklepickle 6y ago
    Regardless, this explosion happened and there are many human beings in distress. That alone would be enough reason to donate. If I was in a car crash, I would not ask people to donate. This is different, this is a humanitarian crisis, and he is not soliciting donations for himself but rather the hospital. I'm all for questioning things, but come on. There's a giant freaking crater in the ground. And you think, what exactly? This is a grand conspiracy to get you to donate a few dollars. I'm sorry but that doesn't make sense.

shrimpx 6y ago

They store a pile of fireworks next to 2700 tons of explosive materials, then they send in people to make sparks right next to the fireworks.

kidintech 6y ago

473 comments, 0 mentions of Rafic Hariri or Hezbollah. HN, I really had higher expectations.

pizza234 6y ago

There's something I don't get in this story. Based on Wikipedia/Aljazeera: Customs officials had sent letters to judges requesting a resolution to the issu e of the confiscated cargo, proposing that the ammonium nitrate be either export ed, given to the army, or sold to the private Lebanese Explosives Company. Lette rs had been sent on [...]. One of the letters sent in 2016 noted that judges had not replied to previous requests Have the authorities been so indolent that they avoided "doing some paperwork", and indirectly causing a catastrophe, or the proposal of selling the material was not realistic?

jbirer 6y ago

I call bad attempt at cover-up. The government is trying to redirect the anger to "welders" because there is growing anger towards the ruling class.