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How many governments do you think have a ready-made safe and secured spot in waiting to store thousands of tons of explosives? Some very wealthy nations might,

How many governments do you think have a ready-made safe and secured spot in waiting to store thousands of tons of explosives? Some very wealthy nations might, but I suspect very few could have handled this much better.

lostlogin 6y ago
And yet explosions this large are rare. Taking the material off the owner is a last resort. Regulation can prevent the problem long before it gets to the stage it got to in Lebanon. Assuming I’m wrong, why are there not more explosions?
- lmm 6y ago
  This stuff sat there without exploding for seven years, and was only set off because of two unfortunate coincidences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster happened in a western country with a reputable company that followed the regulations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery is still sitting in prime position to destroy London's financial district one day, with no-one taking responsibility for clearing it up.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    In the first example of exploding fireworks, the company was not following regulations, as noted in your link. The fireworks were stored illegally and people went to prison as a result of their behaviour. The second is bad, but isn’t the same the same as it’s there by accident and the remedy is far from clear. Depending on who you believe, the munitions are either safe now, or can’t be touched. Quite how that gets managed I don’t know. The link also says this about the last time they tried to manage a sunken munitions ship: “One of the reasons that the explosives have not been removed was the unfortunate outcome of a similar operation in July 1967, to neutralize the contents of SS Kielce, a ship of Polish origin, sunk in 1946, off Folkestone in the English Channel. During preliminary work, Kielce exploded with a force equivalent to an earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale, digging a 20-foot-deep (6 m) crater in the seabed and bringing "panic and chaos" to Folkestone, although there were no injuries.[5] Kielce was at least 3 or 4 miles (4.8 or 6.4 km) from land, sunk in deeper water than Richard Montgomery, and had "just a fraction" of the load of explosives”
TeMPOraL 6y ago
Isn't it what military is for? Surely every military on the planet has protocols and infrastructure around ordnance disposal. As well as logistics capability to pick it up and transport to the disposal/storage site.
userbinator 6y ago
At least they could've dispersed it in multiple smaller storage areas, rather than accumulating it all together.
rorykoehler 6y ago
They could literally Kiat scatter it on the land. It’s a fertiliser

lostlogin 6y ago

And yet explosions this large are rare. Taking the material off the owner is a last resort. Regulation can prevent the problem long before it gets to the stage it got to in Lebanon. Assuming I’m wrong, why are there not more explosions?

lmm 6y ago
This stuff sat there without exploding for seven years, and was only set off because of two unfortunate coincidences. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster happened in a western country with a reputable company that followed the regulations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Richard_Montgomery is still sitting in prime position to destroy London's financial district one day, with no-one taking responsibility for clearing it up.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  In the first example of exploding fireworks, the company was not following regulations, as noted in your link. The fireworks were stored illegally and people went to prison as a result of their behaviour. The second is bad, but isn’t the same the same as it’s there by accident and the remedy is far from clear. Depending on who you believe, the munitions are either safe now, or can’t be touched. Quite how that gets managed I don’t know. The link also says this about the last time they tried to manage a sunken munitions ship: “One of the reasons that the explosives have not been removed was the unfortunate outcome of a similar operation in July 1967, to neutralize the contents of SS Kielce, a ship of Polish origin, sunk in 1946, off Folkestone in the English Channel. During preliminary work, Kielce exploded with a force equivalent to an earthquake measuring 4.5 on the Richter scale, digging a 20-foot-deep (6 m) crater in the seabed and bringing "panic and chaos" to Folkestone, although there were no injuries.[5] Kielce was at least 3 or 4 miles (4.8 or 6.4 km) from land, sunk in deeper water than Richard Montgomery, and had "just a fraction" of the load of explosives”

TeMPOraL 6y ago

Isn't it what military is for? Surely every military on the planet has protocols and infrastructure around ordnance disposal. As well as logistics capability to pick it up and transport to the disposal/storage site.

userbinator 6y ago

At least they could've dispersed it in multiple smaller storage areas, rather than accumulating it all together.

rorykoehler 6y ago

They could literally Kiat scatter it on the land. It’s a fertiliser