Huge Beirut explosion

RaymondLin

I bow to @ThorpyFX ;

It's nice to get an expert opinion rather than lots of guessing.

Kilgore

ThorpyFX said:

The video evidence shows that this was a fire that burnt to detonation. How the fire started is another question but the event itself and how it ended up is really clear.

So it could still be lizard aliens smoking weed wot started the fire?

Thought so. 

proggy

I suppose all will come to light as soon as the dust settles.....

Sorry.

ThePrettyDamned

ThorpyFX said:

robgilmo said:

2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, for that to be turned into an explosive it needs to be fuelled, it literally needs to be mixed with fuel, and just the right amount of fuel or nothing will happen, then you need a detonator, the detonator has to be able to produce a detonation wave through the fuelled nitrate at 2-3 MPS, also, if this was household fertiliser it would be mixed with ammonium sulfate or urea which would not allow detonation to occur, 
The explosion in Germany in the 1920's needed dynamite as a detonator!

They are now saying that has been stored there since 2013, thats highly unlikely! ''where is my shipment of ammonium nitrate''?  ''dont know sir, we seem to have lost it'' ''what, 2750 tonnes of it''? Not like its going to be inconspicuous now is it?

That was no accident.

Rob this isn’t true. All explosives have something called a critical diameter. This is the Minimum diameter for the material that allows a detonation. 

An explosive as the general public knows it is anything from a Deflagration (typically subsonic) through time a detonation which is supersonic.

some explosive materials like Ammonium nitrate ( which is an oxidiser and usually requires diesel or another fuel in mixture ) typically won’t detonate unless they are kick started with another charge known as a booster. But...... the critical diameter is key and in the case of ammonium nitrate it can transition from burning to deflagration to detonation WITHOUT a booster of it is stored in large quantities above the critical diameter. the Halifax incident is an example of this

This looks to be an accident, these happen all over the world relatively regularly...

You are a constant source of surprise and wonder, thorpy. 

Alterlifeson

Just saw that this was posted over on Reddit. Apparently the storage where the AN was kept shortly before the explosion.

ThorpyFX

Alterlifeson said:

Just saw that this was posted over on Reddit. Apparently the storage where the AN was kept shortly before the explosion.

Yup that’s a shitshow....... inevitable 

ICBM

ThorpyFX said:

It was a big explosion but still not as deadly as it would have been if it had been a High explosive. Ammonium Nitrate has a TNT equivalence of 0.42 so 42% as effective gram per gram of TNT.

2,750 tons of it... so if it all went up (not sure if that's likely, you may be able to give an informed opinion), x .42 gives a TNT equivalent of 1,155 tons, or just over one kiloton.

That's one-thirteenth of the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima - although obviously there was far more intense heat radiation there as well as the high-energy nuclear radiation.

But even non-nuclear, it's a frighteningly big explosion and I'm not surprised the entire port area has been virtually obliterated. I think the death toll is very likely to be a considerable underestimate, sadly.

Tex Mexico

Alterlifeson said:

Just saw that this was posted over on Reddit. Apparently the storage where the AN was kept shortly before the explosion.

This has the same energy as those videos that keep coming up on my facebook and instagram, always called something like "Amazing Industry", and it's two skinny guys in shorts and sandals digging out the foundations of a collapsing building with a rusty shovel and a broken chainsaw.

monquixote

In times like this I'm reminded of all the people moaning about things being: "ELF AND SAFETY GORN MAAAD!"

Much as it's annoying I'm glad it's there to prevent things like this.

digitalscream

monquixote said:

In times like this I'm reminded of all the people moaning about things being: "ELF AND SAFETY GORN MAAAD!"

Much as it's annoying I'm glad it's there to prevent things like this.

Indeed. What comes next is the inevitable response which comes from every government in the world who's relaxed regulations, taken shortcuts and come a cropper - "This was unprecedented, we couldn't have known".

ICBM

monquixote said:

In times like this I'm reminded of all the people moaning about things being: "ELF AND SAFETY GORN MAAAD!"

Much as it's annoying I'm glad it's there to prevent things like this.

And yet we had the Buncefield fuel store explosion in this country with modern Elf N Safedy regulations.

ESBlonde

Note to self:

Next time someone complains about H&S guys with clip boards, remember this thread.

digitalscream

ICBM said:

monquixote said:

In times like this I'm reminded of all the people moaning about things being: "ELF AND SAFETY GORN MAAAD!"

Much as it's annoying I'm glad it's there to prevent things like this.

And yet we had the Buncefield fuel store explosion in this country with modern Elf N Safedy regulations.

Regulations can't protect from brute stupidity all the time.

EricTheWeary

In storage since 2014 when it was seized off an abandoned ship so probably could have gone off almost any time in the last 6 years. No one ever tried to claim it back so it seems to have been largely forgotten. 

300,000 been made homeless.  

ThorpyFX

ICBM said:

ThorpyFX said:

It was a big explosion but still not as deadly as it would have been if it had been a High explosive. Ammonium Nitrate has a TNT equivalence of 0.42 so 42% as effective gram per gram of TNT.

2,750 tons of it... so if it all went up (not sure if that's likely, you may be able to give an informed opinion), x .42 gives a TNT equivalent of 1,155 tons, or just over one kiloton.

That's one-thirteenth of the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima - although obviously there was far more intense heat radiation there as well as the high-energy nuclear radiation.

But even non-nuclear, it's a frighteningly big explosion and I'm not surprised the entire port area has been virtually obliterated. I think the death toll is very likely to be a considerable underestimate, sadly.

yup its huge, there is more to it though. Military explosives (of which TNT isn't anywhere close to the most powerful) have a "brissance" or shattering effect that belies their kg... AN isn't as shattering as mil spec explosives but it can be destructive nonetheless. from memory the manchester trafford centre bomb was ANFO (AN and Diesel) and that is called the £billion bomb because of the damage 1.5 tons did.

this will have destroyed so much property, even to the extent that buildings that look ok will have to be knocked down as structurally unsound.

Btw, Cyprus had an explosive disaster in 2011 that was near 3.2kilotns of military grade explosives....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelos_Florakis_Naval_Base_explosion

beed84

Holy mother of god, what a shit thing to happen. 

Tex Mexico

EricTheWeary said:

In storage since 2014 when it was seized off an abandoned ship so probably could have gone off almost any time in the last 6 years. No one ever tried to claim it back so it seems to have been largely forgotten. 

300,000 been made homeless.  

You kind of wonder, don't you, whose job it would have been to say "isn't it time we neutralised this before something nasty happens?", or more likely if it was anyone's job at all.

Dunno how you'd neutralise it, but I assume it's possible. Too expensive?

monquixote

Tex Mexico said:

EricTheWeary said:

In storage since 2014 when it was seized off an abandoned ship so probably could have gone off almost any time in the last 6 years. No one ever tried to claim it back so it seems to have been largely forgotten. 

300,000 been made homeless.  

You kind of wonder, don't you, whose job it would have been to say "isn't it time we neutralised this before something nasty happens?", or more likely if it was anyone's job at all.

Dunno how you'd neutralise it, but I assume it's possible. Too expensive?

It's fertilizer isn't it.

Presumably you can put it on a field?

Headphones

The Beeb this morning suggested welding in the warehouse was a likely culprit for the initial fire.

crunchman

digitalscream said:

ICBM said:

monquixote said:

In times like this I'm reminded of all the people moaning about things being: "ELF AND SAFETY GORN MAAAD!"

Much as it's annoying I'm glad it's there to prevent things like this.

And yet we had the Buncefield fuel store explosion in this country with modern Elf N Safedy regulations.

Regulations can't protect from brute stupidity all the time.

Health and Safety can breed the wrong kind of culture though.  15 or so years ago I was involved in some stuff at work with method statements and risk assessments for various jobs on the railway.  The guys who were going out on the job had a pile of paper an inch or more thick for some jobs, and it never got read.  It was all about protecting senior management's backside.  The guys at the bottom had to sign a piece of paper so management were covered.