Disaster Fireworks Warehouse Explosion in Beirut - Spoiler: It wasn't Fireworks it was 2,500+ tons of High-Explosive Ammonium Nitrate

Article (Archive)

Beirut, Lebanon (CNN)

A large explosion rocked the Lebanese capital Beirut on Tuesday, damaging buildings and offices around the city.
The source of the explosion was a major fire at a warehouse for firecrackers near the port in Beirut, the state-run National News Agency reported.
A red cloud hung over the city in the wake of the blast as firefighting teams rushed to the scene to try to put out the fire.
Local news reported multiple people were wounded in the incident.
This is a breaking story, more to follow.

Twitter thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/tobiaschneider/status/1290670226934243329

Attaching all of the videos I grabbed from this guys twitter just now as well, here's one of them:

Here are some links to other posts in the thread with more content, you may need to go to the posts directly to see the media:

Spoiler: Two videos

Couple more angles of the explosions, seems everyone in Beirut holds their phone vertically. Buckle up for a very delayed boom in the second video.

Spoiler: Another angle, 'Allahu Ackbar'

Here's a different angle. Notice how the guys recording it say "Allahu Akbar".

EDIT: Direct embed

Spoiler: Slow Motion explosion

Found this slowmo of the explosion in which you can see the fireball and airblast more clearly

Spoiler: Two more videos

(edits: trying to get the spacing of text/video right; links to tweets)
I think this is just a slowed down version of this that I grabbed from twitter (https://twitter.com/saadmohseni/status/1290678176574779395):















Also this for another, closer angle (https://twitter.com/realdavereilly/status/1290690743217119235):

Spoiler: Lebanese Public Security: Not fireworks, High-Explosive Material

View attachment 1495099

And you retards thought putting it all in one place is a good idea?

Spoiler: Sodium Nitrate, PM's Wife and Daughter slightly injured in explosions, ISRAEL UNINVOLVED WE SWEAR

It was explosive sodium nitrate holy shit
View attachment 1495106

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1290698269421600770

Israel denies involvement, Hezbollah says it wasn't their stuff, PM's wife and daughter injured
View attachment 1495109

https://twitter.com/ragipsoylu/status/1290703557797089281

Spoiler: Aftermath videos/photos

What remains of the dock:

Spoiler: Italy Radiation Spike

There’s a radiation spike picked up near Italy/scicily. Let me try to archive this or take a screenshot

http://archive.md/Nefcf

View attachment 1495413

Spoiler: 2 Minute Compilation Video

I know that there are several vids on here but here's a 2+ minute concatenation of multiple angles and some security camera footage of blast sites.

Spoiler: 2,700 TONS of Ammonia

View attachment 1495562
Translation: Preliminary security information talks about 2,700 tons of confiscated ammonia in the port exploded during the process of welding a small hole to prevent theft

 

[Lewisite]

OpenStreetMap has already updated by Beirut removing destroyed buildings and including the crater in the port

Google Maps says the silos are "temporarily closed".

 

[thx1138]

Imagine being so excited for your big day and you're all dressed up in your wedding gown, out grabbing some pretty photos, and then the world explodes around you and turns your city into a pseudo-warzone. Poor girl.

This is the lowdown from The Guardian

"A bride in Beirut was filmed posing for photographs moments before a massive explosion ripped through the city's port and surrounding areas, killing at least 100 people and injuring thousands more.

Israa Seblani, 29, was outside Le Gray Hotel, where she and husband, Ahmad Subeih, had planned to spend their first night as newlyweds, when the blast hit. In the video, filmed by Mahmoud Nakib, Seblani was seen running away from the scene with those around her, later telling reporters: 'It was not describable the devastation and the sound of the explosion. We are still in shock'.

The deadly explosion has been blamed on thousands of tonnes of the chemical ammonium nitrate, which had been lying unsecured in a warehouse since 2014."

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

Guy on a jetski jumped in the water just before the shockwave hit.

 

[Jimmy Durante's Ballsack]

Guy on a jetski jumped in the water just before the shockwave hit.
jetski.mp4

Assuming this guy got under the water in time, did he save himself from pressure-related hearing damage?

 

[Sexy Potoo]

Guy on a jetski jumped in the water just before the shockwave hit.
jetski.mp4

Props to the guy for think quickly, probably saved his hearing at least

 

[RTX Mario]

https://twitter.com/AlArabiya_Eng/status/1290792293939777536, People are putting dudes like Bathrobe Dwane as one of the victims of the Beirut blast

 

[RodgerDodger]

Assuming this guy got under the water in time, did he save himself from pressure-related hearing damage?

It depends on how bad it hit the water. The pressure wave from an explosion is actually much worse in the water. But the fact that the explosion wasn’t underwater and hit the water at an oblique angle probably lessened it. You still saw that wave created in the water by the explosion. That’s the underwater pressure wave. It’s kind of freaky that an on land explosion created that big of a wave in the water.

One of the things that sadly tended to kill sailors on destroyers in WW2, was once the ship was sinking and the abandon ship order was given, they still could be slaughtered by their own ships depth charges. If someone wasn’t quick enough to pull the detonators out of ALL the depth charges before the ship sank, they would go off when they got down to their trigger depth. Anywhere from 100-500’. The pressure wave from them would tear apart any sailors in the water.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

And it's just fucking gone...

Also as much as I feel bad for the people who have died and been injured from this with modern tech and everyone having their own cameras it's so cool to see all these different angles of such a big blast it's on the cool things from bad stuff list like Chernobyl.

The proliferation of cameras is great for historians, scientists, and in this case, demonstrating the power of terajoule-scale blasts. 0.239 kilotons = 1 terajoule, which is around the lowest estimates for this explosion. There's no close-up video footage of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, and footage of shots like Grable and Teapot Apple 2 don't demonstrate the real-time destruction and speed of the blast wave as effectively as the smaller Beirut explosion has. The Tianjin explosions were pretty good but they were weaker and happened at night.

The Chelyabinsk meteor in 2013 is another great example of the documentation made possible by ubiquitous cameras, thanks to Russians encountering so much corruption and insurance scams. Having that footage in the news cycle got lots of people thinking about planetary protection for the first time, and maybe Beirut will help put an end to major ammonium nitrate disasters.

 

[mindlessobserver]

2,500 tons of Ammonium Nitrate in an urban environment? Why would you do this?

 

[MrJokerRager]

Yeah the biggest problem with wanting a giant war to fix things is that:

1. The strongest, most patriotic men who immediately sign up to support their country get killed first
2. The last two times this was tried you have titanic clashes that wear everyone out until a Third Party (The US in those cases) swoops in near the end and dictates the New World Order to everyone else.

United States in World War 1 was a failure but a useful prototype for what happened post World War 2.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

2,500 tons of Ammonium Nitrate in an urban environment? Why would you do this?

Somebody else's problem. It was confiscated from a Russian-owned vessel that had made an emergency stop, been declared unseaworthy, and was abandoned at the port, so the nitrate wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Then nobody bothered to take care of the problem despite multiple letters written to judges since 2014. It was a completely avoidable tragedy.

 

[Big Lenny]

Assuming this guy got under the water in time, did he save himself from pressure-related hearing damage?

Under the water is actually the LAST place you would want to be for an explosion of this magnitude, at that distance. With getting to dorky, sound waves actually travel faster and clearer in liquids and solids as they are denser mediums than air. Its the same reason why you could clearly hear your foot stamping the bottom of the pool so clearly as a kid.

Best case scenario is this guy came out with some of his hearing in tact.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Somebody else's problem. It was confiscated from a Russian-owned vessel that had made an emergency stop, been declared unseaworthy, and was abandoned at the port, so the nitrate wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Then nobody bothered to take care of the problem despite multiple letters written to judges since 2014. It was a completely avoidable tragedy.

That's a really big fucking problem. The Oklahoma City bombing was just four tons of the stuff. FOUR. This was 2,750! I am just...aghast. There is ineptitude and incompetence, and then there is...this. The Lebanese people would be fully justified in dragging their entire government into the public square and lining them up in front of the guillotine.

 

[Rumpleforeskin1488]

Somebody else's problem. It was confiscated from a Russian-owned vessel that had made an emergency stop, been declared unseaworthy, and was abandoned at the port, so the nitrate wasn't supposed to be there in the first place. Then nobody bothered to take care of the problem despite multiple letters written to judges since 2014. It was a completely avoidable tragedy.

Still call BS on reporting. You have to combine Ammonium nitrate and a small amount of some CH(2n+2) hydrocarbon fuel( think diesel)...and you have to confine in a certain way...as well as provide enough energy all at once(blasting cap, trigger explosion, etc)...to get that kind of all-in-one explosion.
What we should have seen is a series of uneven explosions.......I for one,blame the red sea pedestrians. Well at least for providing the shekels to pay the goyim they hired.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Still call BS on reporting. You have to combine Ammonium nitrate and a small amount of some CH(2n+2) hydrocarbon fuel( think diesel)...and you have to confine in a certain way...as well as provide enough energy all at once(blasting cap, trigger explosion, etc)...to get that kind of all-in-one explosion.
What we should have seen is a series of uneven explosions.......I for one,blame the red sea pedestrians. Well at least for providing the shekels to pay the goyim they hired.

No, you don't. If you leave the stuff around long enough it combines with atmospheric gasses, and begins to decompose, creating an explosive gas made up primarily of Oxygen begins to permeate. After that you don't need the fuel oil. What Fuel Oil does is provide the necessary energy to trigger the exothermic reaction. Enough excess gas built up, thanks to poor storage at high heat...say, for 7 years at a Beirut harbor terminal, and all someone needs to do is light a cigarette in the wrong place to trigger a cascading chain reaction.

 

[The Mass Shooter Ron Soye]

Still call BS on reporting. You have to combine Ammonium nitrate and a small amount of some CH(2n+2) hydrocarbon fuel( think diesel)...and you have to confine in a certain way...as well as provide enough energy all at once(blasting cap, trigger explosion, etc)...to get that kind of all-in-one explosion.
What we should have seen is a series of uneven explosions.......I for one,blame the red sea pedestrians. Well at least for providing the shekels to pay the goyim they hired.

Some of the videos do show a smaller explosion and cloud before the main event.

This looks like a smaller one from very close up before the kiloton blast.

Edit: https://kiwifarms.net/threads/fireworks-warehouse-explosion-in-beirut.74338/post-7060177

At about 1:22 an explosion happens, and you can recognize the cloud in other footage. The big blast happens about 34 seconds later. Kind of like Tianjin.

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

Under the water is actually the LAST place you would want to be for an explosion of this magnitude, at that distance.

Sort of. The detonation wasn't in the water and the breakwater would interrupt any shockwave in the water.

Still call BS on reporting. You have to combine Ammonium nitrate and a small amount of some CH(2n+2) hydrocarbon fuel( think diesel)...and you have to confine in a certain way...as well as provide enough energy all at once(blasting cap, trigger explosion, etc)...to get that kind of all-in-one explosion.

What you are describing is ANFO, AN with 6% diesel, every quarry's favorite low cost blasting agent. Neither AN nor ANFO require a high velocity ignition source to go boom. AN will explode once it it gets hot enough to explosively decompose and set off the rest of the bags packed in the warehouse. AN has a relative equivalence of .42 tons of TNT, ANFO is .74.


Does anybody know where the 2.2 kt number on wikipedia is coming from? Even at 2750 tonnes(3030 tons) of AN, that is only 1.27 kt under ideal conditions. 3030 tons of ANFO would be 2.24 kt so maybe that's the fuckup?

ETA: I found a couple articles referencing Sim Tack for the number. Apparently, no one checked up on that.

 

[TexOffender]

Another aerial pic of the explosion site.

 

[kcbbq]

That's a really big fucking problem. The Oklahoma City bombing was just four tons of the stuff. FOUR. This was 2,750! I am just...aghast. There is ineptitude and incompetence, and then there is...this. The Lebanese people would be fully justified in dragging their entire government into the public square and lining them up in front of the guillotine.

The Word Trade Center bombing used less than 1500lbs of urea nitrate, but that's a more refined explosive.



Kind of shows how well those buildings were constructed to have stayed up in '93.

Does anybody know where the 2.2 kt number on wikipedia is coming from? Even at 2750 tonnes(3030 tons) of AN, that is only 1.27 kt under ideal conditions. 3030 tons of ANFO would be 2.24 kt so maybe that's the fuckup?

I got it from Sim Tack at Stratfor, not sure of the provenance beyond that or if he has backed off that number.

 

[TexOffender]

The silo