18 ms·
Beirut Port Explosion
- Houston420 6y agoOh, god!
- Houston420 6y agoWhy did such things happen?
- Houston420 6y agoVery interesting
- Houston420 6y agoThank you!
- kqvamxurcagg 6y agoThis is incredible and I can only imagine how much time this took to create. Definitely also worth taking a look at their previous investigations at https://forensic-architecture.org/ https://forensic-architecture.org/.
- Noxmiles 6y agoThey also have a YouTube account: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEeyMdTjYEYESf_8HyiCRAg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEeyMdTjYEYESf_8HyiCRAg
- justinclift 6y agoThat has some good videos on it, including one showing evidence of Russian military directly involved in the Ukraine invasion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OldnzVNE71E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OldnzVNE71E
- mattlondon 6y agoAgreed - this is great and deeply fascinating to me. How did I not know about this before! :) Bye-bye to getting any work done for the rest of the day!
- aosaigh 6y agoI'm exactly the same, what an incredible organisation. The use of computer vision, VFX, modelling and VR is inspiring.
- justinclift 6y agoThe models they've created are in Blender (OSS) and Cinema 4D (not OSS) file formats. Watching some of their video's, they seem to use Blender a lot. :)
- tremon 6y agoThere's a wealth of great investigative work there. Really impressive stuff.
- ubrpwnzr 6y agoEverything about reporting this way is amazing, it’s an aspiring goal for on watchers of what data can provide. As you watch this you know that grant money is working hard here. Much respect for such a talented team bringing in complex engineering for all to consume.
- ubrpwnzr 6y agoThis raises the bar in so many ways, love it.
- iguy 6y ago> you know that grant money is working hard here Am I the only one who finds this a little disturbing? I mean the thing is beautifully produced, no doubt, I don't want to take anything away from the skills of the people who made it. But the slickness moves it somehow from "scrappy bunch who gathered all the open data & collaboratively figured stuff out" into a different category. More like "someone with very deep pockets wants to tell me a particular story". Like getting the sort of 10-page glossy brochure they use to sell manhattan penthouses, but it's from the local animal shelter... and there's nothing wrong with the kitten pictures, the photography is excellent, but you wonder a bit who paid all those professionals, and why.
- schrijver 6y agoIf I’m not mistaken Forensic Architecture have a lot of connections to the art world (and architecture of course, it’s in the name of the project). Some of them teach at art schools (Goldsmiths etc.), they were nominated for the Turner Prize. I don’t know if it shows a shifting definition of what art is, but it’s interesting that this is the context that (in part) enables them to do their work. It also helps to explain the attention to visual presentation.
- iguy 6y agoThanks that's interesting. Although it also seems a slightly odd collision of worlds. I mean art is important, and can show us personal perspectives we might otherwise miss. (And maybe the super-slick presentation is something someone did for their own pleasure, not because some sponsor was willing to pay the day rate.) But carefully weighing evidence and doubt isn't exactly the core idea of the art world. You will win few prizes by pointing out factual mistakes in others' work. (Not saying I know of any factual inaccuracies here, to be clear.)
- est31 6y agoThere is also https://www.38north.org/ https://www.38north.org/ if you are interested in North Korea.
- samstave 6y agoI’m just waiting to see what’s out there in like the NSA, which is able to do this automatically. Have a drone take Lidar or whatever model of an area, feed the pictures in and some other data and the system produces videos like this. This video was incredible!
- knowaveragejoe 6y agoTheir archive of police brutality during the BLM protests this summer is presented in an interesting fashion: https://blmprotests.forensic-architecture.org/ https://blmprotests.forensic-architecture.org/
- e40 6y agoThis one is particularly relevant to goings on in the US recently: https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/police-brutality-at-the-black-lives-matter-protests https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/police-bruta...
- cseleborg 6y agoI agree that this is work of very high technical quality. I was slightly disturbed, though, that this didn't include any interview from people working there, though. I realize it's neither trivial nor cheap to organize, bit it did leave me a strange feeling that I have trouble putting into words. Is there an element of arrogance in assuming we can simply "science the shit out of this" (to quote a well-known Martian), comfortably removed from the faraway site of a human tragedy and without involving any of the affected people, and call it a day? Kind of like marketeers only trusting analytics and never talking to a single customer, but with an element of western arrogance on top of it.
- dirtyid 6y agoVery well presented.
- m4r35n357 6y agoChilling stuff
- throwaway7281 6y agoExcellent video. We have the tech and skill to reconstruct reality, at the same time we do not possess the skill to let reason rule critical parts of our (here: Beirut's) infrastructure. As humankind, we are probably closer than ever to hassle free life and we will nevertheless go down skirmishing and fighting.
- m12k 6y agoAs William Gibson puts it, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed.
- eigenhombre 6y agoThe event itself is rather Gibsonian, isn't it? Kudos to the team that put together this video, it is extremely well done.
- bamboleo 6y agoIt's hard to lump this kind of excellence into a "we." "We" Albert Einstein are prodigies. "We" anti-vax are very far from the other end of "we"
- marcooliv 6y agoamazing video!
- Houston420 6y agoagree with you
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoVery well-done.
- definetheword 6y agoThe 12 minute video is worth watching. I was impressed in the density and clarity in the resulting research. Great job and thanks for open sourcing this
- _aleph2c_ 6y agoHere is an article about how the ammonium nitrate ended up there in the first place: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/05/beirut-blast-tracing-the-explosives-that-tore-the-capital-apart/ https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/05/beirut-blast-traci... Here is an article about the history of ammonium nitrate: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/deadly-history-ammonium-nitrate-explosive-linked-to-beirut-blast/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/08/deadly-hi... (comment edited)
- bkmrkr 6y agohttps://www.jpost.com/international/is-hezbollahs-ammonium-nitrate-linked-to-plot-against-jews-in-argentina-649268 https://www.jpost.com/international/is-hezbollahs-ammonium-n...
- jcranmer 6y agoThat link does nothing to support a claim that the ammonium nitrate in Beirut is linked to Hezbollah.
- maeln 6y agoNowhere it is said in the article that the Hezbollah is responsible for the presence of the ammonium nitrate. Yes they did use it in the past, like almost all terrorist organization/militia, but there is no evidence that they had anything to do with its storage in the port. The AlJazeera article explain very well how it came here. Rumours of the responsibility of the Hezbollah, or Israel depending on which side of the fence you are, for the blast has been going on since day one, and there hasn't been any substantial proof. Don't get me wrong, I have no sympathy for the Hezbollah, but lets be honest, the tragedy can be very well explain by the sheer level of incompetence and corruption of the Lebanese government (in which the Hezbollah also plays a big role).
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoWhy always no one has sympathy for Hezbollah and yet people are divided on whether they have sympathy for Israel or not? They both have grievances against each other and both are set to exterminate the other. The USA picks sides but we don't have to. And I don't care if they say insensitive things or whatever. War is way bigger than words and both of them commit atrocities, that much is obvious. Both of them can also see history from a certain perspective and justify themselves, and I can see that in both cases also.
- aosaigh 6y agoI hadn't seen the leaked footage and photos from inside the warehouse, nor the videos from the firefighters before the explosion. Very interesting. This website (and organisation) is fascinating. There are other excellent videos on the site, for example: https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-killing-of-mark-duggan https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-killing-...
- bigiain 6y ago> nor the videos from the firefighters before the explosion. There were a few bits of video footage where I watched on horrified thinking "I wonder how they got hold of that memory card, because there's no way whoever filmed that got out alive..."
- fersarr 6y agovery well done
- tanseydavid 6y agoThank you for this -- fascinating.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- brazzy 6y agoMoney quote: > Mr Collett contended that from an engineering perspective, the arrangement of goods within the building was the spatial layout of a makeshift bomb on the scale of a warehouse, awaiting detonation.
- tremon 6y agoThe part where they overlay Australia's recommendations for safely storing ammonium nitrate over the blast zone analysis was equally impressive to me.
- louwrentius 6y agoThis was amazing to watch. Highly recommended. I do start to wonder if any of such materials are stored like this in one of our ports, such as Rotterdam, The Netherlands. I can't imagine such a mess to exist there. But The Netherlands remembers the Firework explosion in Enschede, from 2000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster It's not nearly at the scale of Beirut, but it killed 23 people.
- zerkten 6y agoThe BBC asked a similar question after the event: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53755289 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-53755289.
- thdrdt 6y agohttps://www.ad.nl/buitenland/moeten-wij-ons-in-nederland-zorgen-maken-om-ammoniumnitraat~a6ff8f8c/ https://www.ad.nl/buitenland/moeten-wij-ons-in-nederland-zor... (Dutch) The storage and production is highly regulated. Every suspicious event must be communicated with the "Nationaal Coördinator Terrorismebestrijding" (coordinator counterterrorism).
- louwrentius 6y agoBedankt!
- lostlogin 6y agoNot exactly ‘stored’ but it’s one hell of a mess - the sunken explosives near London. If those went up the theories on what happens are horrifying. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/17/fresh-fears-ss-richard-montgomery-wartime-wreck-kent-explosive-munitions https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/...
- spurgu 6y agoNon-AMP link: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/17/fresh-fears-ss-richard-montgomery-wartime-wreck-kent-explosive-munitions https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/17/fresh-fears-ss...
- jeanloolz 6y agoThat is some serious level investigation and presentation. The video is insanely visually informative. The 3D rendering matched with the mobile videos of the bags got my jaw dropped.
- gadders 6y agoI thought it was bad enough to store that much potential explosive, but to put it with fireworks and detonation cord as well...
- sharken 6y agoYeah, this is 6 years of negligence and incompetence. Here is an account on the fireworks present in the warehouse: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/07/beirut-explosion-former-port-worker-says-fireworks-stored-in-hangar https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/07/beirut-explosi... And yet it looks like things are still bad around Beirut port: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-crisis-fire-tyres/tires-and-oil-on-fire-at-beirut-port-military-source-says-idUSKBN2611R3 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-crisis-fire-tyres... https://amp.dw.com/en/beirut-port-fire/a-54881149 https://amp.dw.com/en/beirut-port-fire/a-54881149
- notrealpersonq 6y agoVery well done video, however they avoided the controversial issues of the explosion. Everywhere in Lebanon, people reported seeing and hearing jets flying and even some videos show flying objects. They also never touched on what might have triggered the fire to begin with or whether there was a possibility of a weapons cache being hidden there.
- tremon 6y agoor whether there was a possibility of a weapons cache being hidden there I disagree, they show that the colour of the smoke and the different burn zones/phases is consistent with the declared contents of the warehouse. Anything further than that would be idle speculation.
- itsthetruth 6y ago>[flagged] Hmmm...
- jandrese 6y agoI thought the cause of the fire was found? Wasn’t it sparks from workers welding on a security door to prevent someone from sneaking into the warehouse and setting off the giant bomb they had built?
- notrealpersonq 6y agoFrom what I remember, the welders did their job and left, then the fire started later. Also, they never question why 2 tons of unclaimed ammonium nitrate was just sitting in the warehouse for 5-6 years. This stuff is expensive yet no one was trying to get it back. They never touched those controversial parts of the explosion: -jets -was the fire intentional? -what was it doing there to begin with
- oyashirochama 6y agoJust because you finish a job doesn't mean there isn't hot items still around. Many companies and OSHA specifically, in the states require several hours of observation after doing things that create sparks in high combustible areas. Sparks from metal can also migrate quite far or catch easier to burn metals too. The unclaimed ammonium nitrate was simply government negligence, it wasn't unclaimed it was confiscated and never moved or properly secured.
- bredren 6y agoIn the past this kind of material would be collected and analyzed by state intelligence services. Combined by allies and used to gain leverage for individual or combined strategic priorities. Something like, “Here is how negligent you were. Install this person in power or we leak this and your people revolt and you won’t be able to walk away.” More recently, it seems, some news organizations have begun assembling reports using modeling and expert analysis. A good example is The NY Times report on Philadelphia Police use of tear gas against a group of trapped protestors. [1] Having this information about the Beirut warehouse explosion open-sourced so-to-speak, seems to signal a further shift away from reliance on state intelligence and the advertising-funded third state. This reminds me some of the collected content created and posted to social media by the public in the aftermath of the downing of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752. That loose set of content eventually forced the Iranian government to admit responsibility. I’d presume that the quality and speed of independent research and analysis of public data will increase to where a scene of non-media, ngo research groups grows, beating out the resources of any given media or government. Sort of like warez, but with information analysis. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007174941/philadelphia-tear-gas-george-floyd-protests.html https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000007174941/philadelphi...
- Houston420 6y agowow
- Houston420 6y agoReally good example
- nwsm 6y agoSimilarly we've gone from the CIA/FBI being "big brother" to social media companies filling the role.
- newsclues 6y agoNot sure if this is mildly better or severely worse
- interestica 6y agoWhat's the opposite of Augmented Reality? This does such a great job to overlay real-world video and photography onto a 3D simulation.
- dplavery92 6y agoI would call most of what was done in this presentation Photogrammetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry
- interestica 6y agoYeah. But the most interesting visuals to me were the placement of 'leaked images' in the virtual warehouse. It had the effect of contextualizing those photos and, for lack of a better term, exploding them. The value to me is what it did to the photos rather than what the photos did to the creation of the space. I'm not sure these instances fall under the photogrammetry umbrella.
- micropoet 6y agoJust like the movies!
- netsharc 6y agoLike Deja Vu ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NPG1RNhrsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NPG1RNhrsM ), The Dark Knight's sonar ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRELLH86Edo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRELLH86Edo ) or the series Devs. I've always thought it'd be amazing to be able to view an event from different angles via crowd-sourced videos, and that it was very doable. From an information scientist point of view, I'm glad to see it's been done.
- bamboleo 6y agoThat's what came to mind too. This is movie-level "Enhance" material, minus the scrolling-text monitors in the background and overzealous UIs.
- danpalmer 6y agoIf you enjoy this, I'd recommend looking into the organisation Bellingcat. They do investigative journalism using social media/crowd sourcing/leaked database, and many similar forensic techniques. They've done great analysis on the MH17 missile attack for example, which is documented in their podcast: https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/podcasts/2019/07/17/mh17-episode-guide-1/ https://www.bellingcat.com/resources/podcasts/2019/07/17/mh1...
- fuoqi 6y agoSee this branch which discusses Bellingcat: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25150913 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25150913 (BTW it's interesting that the same link got mentioned twice here in comments, even though relation to the OP is weak in my opinion)
- dageshi 6y agoThat is some impressive work
- thepill__ 6y agoBased on the title i thought of another explosion ...
- gnulinux 6y agoThis is among the best video I watched recently. Very well done. Congrats to everyone involved in this project.
- andreamutz 6y agoI wish they provided references to all media they used: - YouTube links - links to twitter media - timestamps for all the screenshots - (best) zip of all media files on archive.org
- npteljes 6y agoRTFA. There's a direct link to the media, and also a link to their github where there's an xlsx with links the original sources.
- andreamutz 6y agoI RTFA. The direct link to media only contains snapshots of the video sources, not the videos themselves. The xlsx was added 1 hour after my comment was written, so I guess thanks are in order!
- npteljes 6y agoI see, sorry for the assumption!
- rendall 6y agoForensic Architecture! Y U NO RSS FEED??
- yyyk 6y agoThis investigation ignores a key question: How many kg of ammonium nitrate was actually in the warehouse. Surely that's extremely important to the models. They only mention an mtv news report mentioning the stated figure of 2750t. That figure comes from the ship's documents. Yet there are estimates that suggest the actual explosion is only equivalent to 1000-1500t[0], or 700-1000t[1]. If the actual amount of nitrate was lower that the stated figure this strongly suggests some form of smuggling was involved, and someone was siphoning off the material. This would immediately explain the enormous 'negligence' that let this incident happen in the first place. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53668493 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53668493 [1] https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/a-hidden-tycoon-african-explosives-and-a-loan-from-a-notorious-bank-questionable-connections-surround-beirut-explosion-shipment https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/a-hidden-tycoon-afri...
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoOr it degraded in the humidity? Not sure how that would play out.
- yyyk 6y agoI (not an expert) don't think trace materials or humidity can explain the size of the explosion being 1/2 to 1/4 of stated storage. That must require significant chemical changes. I suspect these changes would appear in the plume or type of explosion; Yet no investigation finds any evidence of any type of material not in the original documents. So we have 'raw' ammonium nitrate possibly contaminated with trace materials - which brings us back to the explosion weight being inconsistent with the documented weight.
- eCa 6y ago2750 tonnes, not kg.
- yyyk 6y agoOuch. I wrote kg instinctively. Corrected.
- holler 6y agoFrom a laymen's perspective, it's hard to imagine just how negligent the port authorities could have been in managing the warehouse. 2750tons high-explosive Ammonium Nitrate? Check. 50tons Ammonium Phosphate? Check. Stacks of flammable wooden pallets among Ammonium Nitrate? Check. 1000 flammable rubber car tires? Check. 23tons of explosive fireworks? 5 rolls of detonator cord? Check. I mean... how/why?
- tsjq 6y agoand some alleged welding sparks in the same location
- holler 6y agototally crazy! there has to be more to the story
- ineedasername 6y agoWhat would be the additional details? Welding is a pretty common activity in any sort of industrial area, especially when repairing large constructs made of metal. Sure, I guess there could be some salient detail we're missing, but welding alone is certainly a highly plausible catalyst.
- mumblemumble 6y agoThere was a broken door. The port authority was worried that people might use it to gain entry to the building and tamper with or steal some of the dangerous stuff they were storing in there. So they asked a crew to fix the door.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jcranmer 6y agoFrom what I understand, the warehouse was a collection of confiscated goods by customs at the port. So I can easily see that the managers at the warehouse didn't know and didn't care about proper safety storage procedures for these hazardous goods, since they hadn't been planning to acquire them in the first place. (In US legal terms, this would be recklessness). However, evidently some people (their affiliation is not clear to me) were aware of the major risks this caused and pleaded with the judiciary to do something about it, to no avail. I'm somewhat mystified as to who exactly it is that recklessly put the ammonium nitrate where it is, and I think that the desire to avoid blame here is strong enough (and the blame itself widespread enough) that a proper investigation will only end in stonewalling or scapegoating.
- metalliqaz 6y agothis is awesome
- zaroth 6y agoMy first thought reading the headline was, “Shit, not another one?!” Could we add a word like “Analysis” to the headline please?
- baq 6y agoThe video was absolutely amazing. I’ve watched it at 1x speed and don’t feel like I wasted a single second of my life. This used to happen approximately never with videos.
- ziptron 6y agoI spent many years as a forensic engineer. In my career we worked on several high profile cases but none were ever presented as well as this one. Kudos to this team!
- thetis 6y agoI've been lucky last summer to be able to see one of the exhibition of forensic-architecture in Basel, Switzerland. And today i'm happy to see one of their work on my favorite website HN. This was a very interesting work between art, data, dataviz, video art. I would recommend to everybody to check their exhibition schedule and go out to see if there is one not far from you https://forensic-architecture.org/programme/exhibitions https://forensic-architecture.org/programme/exhibitions
- gbrindisi 6y agoI've watched an exhibition by Forensic Architecture a few months ago in Gothenburg and was blown away by it. Incredible and inspiring work.
- iSnow 6y agoI see what you did there.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- riffic 6y agoI have the stupidest nitpick but the report's author (and everyone tbh) should use ISO 8601 formatted dates: YYYY-MM-DD my argument is summed up by the famous and relevant xkcd #1179 https://xkcd.com/1179/ https://xkcd.com/1179/
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thro1 6y agoFrom the video: 5:38 [5:54pm] as reported by media outlets, the fire brigade arrived approximately 4 minutes after initial call was made to the station, at 5:54pm 4:48 [5:56pm] ..from this point at about 5:56pm the temperature inside the warehouse start to rising rapidly.. 5:15 [5:59pm] the sound o fireworks start being heard, approximately 5:59pm, [titles over the gates: 'Closed Closed Closed'] it shows that many windows and doors are shut, according to the experts, confinement creates hotspots, areas of high temperature in which ammonium nitrate can get close to its combustion point 2:31 [6:07:44pm] .. small explosive charges as fireworks.. 2:50 [6:08:18pm] single point explosion Does it mean that the fire brigade could have chances to survive ? - if they open all the big gates soon after they come, making an airflow and avoiding confinement: would 'the temperature inside the warehouse start to rising rapidly' as well and would it make the situation [in this case/in theory] better ('confinement creates hotspots') or worse (more oxygen) ? - if it could help (in this specific situation?), what was needed to make such decision ? What was the best they could do, and what when having full situation awareness (run away ??) ?
- gridspy 6y agoStandard fire protocol would advise against opening the doors, to limit the oxygen. I think by the time the fire-fighters arrived there really was no hope of containing this fire. Tyre fires [0] are famously hard to extinguish, even on their own. Generally the best a fire department can do here is to prevent the building full of dangerous chemicals from causing nearby fires. It looks like it was too late for that due to the dangerous storage. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_fire
- amai 6y agoThey have identified four types of smoke plume. But they only reconstruct three types of material in the warehouse: fireworks, tires and ammonium nitrate. Aren't they missing something?
- rtkwe 6y agoIt goes initial small fire caused by the welders -> tires -> fireworks -> ammonium nitrate. The exact cause probably won't be known because there's been no video discovered that shows that portion of the warehouse and anyone close enough to have known were likely killed in the explosion. It's not particularly important though for the purpose of the investigation because the goal was to show establish clearly that the storage was negligent so victims can seek legal redress.
- ineedasername 6y agoIt goes initial small fire caused by the welders -> tires -> fireworks -> ammonium nitrate. Yeah, I'm not sure the "swiss cheese" model of disasters applies here. I'm not aware of any form of metaphorical cheese that could maintain it's structural integrity under the conditions present at this warehouse.
- superkuh 6y agoHere is a mirror to access the article that doesn't require executing javascript code. It is just a document. https://archive.is/BBe1X https://archive.is/BBe1X
- bamboleo 6y agoYour document doesn't play the video. You're missing out.
- zootboy 6y agoThere is a youtube channel run by the US Chemical Safety Board that provides similar reconstruction videos of chemical safety incidents: https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB/videos?disable_polymer=1 https://www.youtube.com/user/USCSB/videos?disable_polymer=1
- calcifer 6y agoOfftopic, but disable_polymer doesn't do anything anymore.
- anonu 6y agoThe point the video makes towards the end is a good one: just basic storage standards were not followed. Forget for one moment that this makeshift bomb laid dormant for years and nothing was done despite constant warnings from officials. Had port officials followed basic storage etiquette, like placing the AN in manageable clusters, separating those clusters from each other by a moderate distance, and not storing other combustible material like fireworks and tyres, the Beirut explosion could at least have been mitigated. The video makes a point that probably 50% of the AN exploded -> 200 people died. I shudder to think what double that would have done.
- thro1 6y agoIf it wasn't hot days maybe, and no welding work close to combustible materials, then what you notice (but not 'just' only), then not 'confined and contaminated' (9:45) in the chain of failures.. That's why my question (†) - if it could be really avoidable at the last moment, as the video suggest. (†) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25154599 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25154599
- bamboleo 6y agoI missed the part where it mentioned 50%. From the "single point of explosion" part I just assumed that only 1 or a small bundle exploded.
- bjourne 6y agoIf you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy this video by the same team about the murder of a Bedouin by police forces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQnQ-DJOa_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQnQ-DJOa_g
- ouid 6y agoI'm not sure I buy the argument that smoke plumes 1 and 2 have different fuels. The color change is fairly continuous, and smoke color changes continuously with the availability of oxygen.
- JohnCClarke 6y agoLooks like really excellent work. Anyone know how the 3D models were built? What SW, how many person-hours, that sort of thing?
- Wicher 6y agoAt 2:54, the commentator says "[...] as little as half of the 2750 sacks of ammonium nitrate". At 6:06, the commentator says "The 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate [...]". There is a possibility that they're describing 1 tonne sacks, but I'm left wondering whether they meant to say something else. An image search for ammonium nitrate packaging shows many 25-50 kg range sacks, and a 500kg industrial sack, leaving me a) wondering whether the report has sacks/tonnes confused and b) on many watchlists. edit: A bit further on they show leaked in-warehouse pictures of sacks of ammonium nitrate that must weigh a tonne (with the number 1000 printed on them). Likely no mistake then.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]