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

 

[CervixHammer]

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.
View attachment 1499079

View attachment 1499083

View attachment 1499081

the talk page might be interesting here.

Blast power in tonnes of TNT/Megajoules?
Is there any determination of the blast measured to the number of tonnes of TNT or Megajoules? Ryan (talk) 23:38, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

That is not easy to do. The cause of the explosion has been suggested to be the detonation of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the warehouse. One could get about 2.75 ⋅ 0.42 = 1.155 kT of TNT equivalent from that amount (0.42 being the relative effectiveness factor of ammonium nitrate). A more conservative estimate may come from visual inspection of the footage, which puts it at "several hundred tons of TNT equivalent". That's what has been reported by the Washington Post, for example. The highest number I have seen reported is 3 kT TNT equivalent, but I don't think that's reliable. For comparison, the latter would exceed the blast power of the Halifax explosion. The article on Largest artificial non-nuclear explosions#2001–present currently gives a value of 1.29 kT, but that number is tagged with a Citation needed and should probably be removed. In any case, this explosion is of similar power as the 2015 Tianjin explosions. Renerpho (talk) 01:31, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

There are now two citations, but the number in the article doesn't match. The wolfram post estimates the yield at ~100 tons TNT (with the error estimated at around 10%), which is comparable to the 300 tons in Tianjin disaster, not equal. The other article just says a “few hundred tons of TNT”. The number in Largest artificial non-nuclear explosions#2001–present should probably be changed as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:240400:B300995:71D9:A39D:F061 (talk) 17:35, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

The method used in the wolfram post is sensitive to the fifth power of the measurements taken and so the margin of error is very high -- definitely more than 10%. 10% was the error when this method was used to estimate the Trinity yield, not the absolute error margin of the method. 3 kilotons is far too high and is likely the result of taking the total mass of AN in short tons (2750 tonnes = 3031 short tons) and wrongly assuming you can convert directly from short tons to TNT equivalent for any explosive. While 0.42 is the relative effectiveness factor of ammonium nitrate, even low levels of hydrocarbon contamination can cause that to go up dramatically, as high as 0.78, so 2750 tonnes could yield up to 2.1 kilotons depending on what else was in that warehouse. 38.100.31.66 (talk) 18:06, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Additionally, the detection of a 3.3 seismic event suggests a yield of up to 1.3 kilotons. 38.100.31.66 (talk) 18:10, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

 

[heathercho]

Guys...
View attachment 1497609

https://twitter.com/JasonMBrodsky/status/1291052928443260928?s=20

View attachment 1497610

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1291049704747421696?s=20

Let's hope it's just a regular fire. As regular as it could be.

Both of these are rather interesting "co-incidences".

Najaf - Archive

Some of the damage :

Announcing that the warehouses are considering as the main point of sale in Najaf Ashraf, the INA correspondent stressed that firefighting teams will continue to work to contain the fire with the presence of more of their staff, and all the province’s security forces and their supporting ones are on standby and are trying to control the fire as soon as possible.

-------
Ajman - Archive - Another archive.

Ajman's market had been closed for 4 months due to the pandemic, but by the sounds of things it wasn't closed anymore, or at the least, it was open enough to the public that people were in there, but everyone escaped. The reporting is a bit all over the place.
It was a major market for Fruit and Vegetables, though. I think they said the largest, in the first article.

Either way, it's strange. Both places are opposite each other over the Persian Gulf, too.
Najaf is inland, Ajman is on the peninsula of the UAE. Just an interesting, added observation.

 

[deepFriedBaka]

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

Corruption, incompetence, and negligence make for a dangerous combination.
"Hey, guys! I know what to do! Let's just store 2,750 tons of highly deadly explosive near a populated city center. That sounds like a great plan with no chance of catastrophic failure."
That building was just waiting to go off, and, frankly, I'm amazed it took six years to do so.

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

the talk page might be interesting here.

I was looking around on Largest Non-nuclear Explosions talk page, but was finding fuck all for this incident. Somebody has already edited it down to 1.2 kt on the chart.

 

[TowinKarz]

Still, "We're going to downgrade that explosion to just over a kiloton" is .... sobering.

The silo

View attachment 1499036

Am I the only one noticing that down there at the roughly 10 o'clock position of the crater is a ship that was.... PUSHED OUT OF THE WATER AND ONTO LAND? The explosion actually Tsunami'd it up onto the dock and left it there.... right next to the shipping containers that are crushed like coke cans....

 

[1Tonka_Truck]

Am I the only one noticing that down there at the roughly 10 o'clock position of the crater is a ship that was.... PUSHED OUT OF THE WATER AND ONTO LAND? The explosion actually Tsunami'd it up onto the dock and left it there....

No, but I keep forgetting to mention it. There is also a cruise ship on its side on the other end of the quay from the grain elevator.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

No, but I keep forgetting to mention it. There is also a cruise ship on its side on the other end of the quay from the grain elevator.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orient_Queen_(1989)

 

[ʕノ•ᴥ•ʔノ Pander]

So yeah I think we can say that's a fucking tactical nuke. This much ANFO basically translates to the Davy Crockett.

 

[usernames can change now!]

117036923_192699535666522_5658848588188114346_n.mp4

So that dude who appeared to be filming from an adjacent building (https://mobile.twitter.com/vishwavel17/status/1290708510297079808) was inside the zone of complete vaporization.

Wack.

 

[Pocket Dragoon]

So that dude who appeared to be filming from an adjacent building (https://mobile.twitter.com/vishwavel17/status/1290708510297079808) was inside the zone of complete vaporization.

Wack.

That certainly does sound like fireworks/small arms rounds cooking off

 

[Hollywood Hitler]

I think it was a Mossad job.

 

[Male Idiot]

The suspect has been apprehended:

 

[Saint Alphonsus]

So are we sure this wasn't a nuke?

 

[Kosher Salt]

So are we sure this wasn't a nuke?

As the title says, it was ammonium nitrate. We even know where it came from and why it was there.

- Ammonium salpeter was confiscated from the ship Rhosus in September, 2014. The cargo was shipped from Batumi to Mozambique. Confiscated cargo was stored at a warehouse on the 12th pier of Beirut harbor and had to be disposed of. Sailors on Rhosus claimed that the owner of the ship was a businessman from Khabarovsk, Igor Grechushkin. They say the owner announced bankruptcy and "actually abandoned the ship". The lawyers representing creditors had 3 arrest warrants for Rhosus, which flew the Moldovian flag.

Igor Grechushkin, a Russian (Cypriot national) ship owner has been scamming his sailors for years. He hired a new captain and crew in Turkey, and the ship, which already had a cargo of ammonium nitrate, made a long resupplying/refuelling stop in Greece before leaving for Beirut.

The cargo which was to be loaded in Beirut (road repair machinery) nearly destroyed the crappy ship, and the crew mutinied. The new captain realized the previous crew, having been scammed, had mutinied, cut their losses and quit, and they'd be similarly scammed and dumped in Mozambique with no money to return home.

They refused to sail for Mozambique, and the owner told them to go to Cyprus instead.

However, they owed the port docking fees and a fine for not taking the road repair machinery, and the ship was arrested by the Lebanese authorities. The owner abandoned it, most men were allowed to fly home, but four, including the captain, were kept as hostages. They wrote to the embassy, to the consulate, to Putin. Russia told them to stfu. The 64-year-old captain was having health problems and asked to be released, the Lebanese demanded another captain as a replacement hostage.

 

[not william stenchever]

I honestly hope that some of the people principally responsible for this absolute goatfuck of an avoidable catastrophe get hung from lamp posts.

 

[and 3 others]

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.

This rule is only applicable when the source of the pressure wave is also underwater. Whenever a pressure wave (or light wave, or whatever) hits a boundary between two mediums with different indices of refraction, some fraction of the energy is transmitted and the rest is reflected. Because the fraction transmitted is always less than 100%, you're always going to want to be on the other side of the boundary than the explosion. It's true that the pressure and temperature differences in the air can change its index of refraction enough over large distances to outweigh a single air-water boundary, but that only happens when you're working with scales large enough that the weather over the explosion is different than the weather where you are.

tl;dr If the explosion is in the air, put as much of yourself underwater as possible. If the explosion is in the water, put as much of yourself in the air as possible.

 

[not william stenchever]

This rule is only applicable when the source of the pressure wave is also underwater. Whenever a pressure wave (or light wave, or whatever) hits a boundary between two mediums with different indices of refraction, some fraction of the energy is transmitted and the rest is reflected. Because the fraction transmitted is always less than 100%, you're always going to want to be on the other side of the boundary than the explosion. It's true that the pressure and temperature differences in the air can change its index of refraction enough over large distances to outweigh a single air-water boundary, but that only happens when you're working with scales large enough that the weather over the explosion is different than the weather where you are.

tl;dr If the explosion is in the air, put as much of yourself underwater as possible. If the explosion is in the water, put as much of yourself in the air as possible.

In the short video from the boat that seemed like it capsized, it looks like the explosion was partially transmitted into a waterborne shockwave that was moving way faster through the water than the air. It would follow that the water shockwave would be just a fraction of the total energy from the main explosion. There was another video of the explosion from a boat, but I think the spur of land with the grain elevator was between them and the warehouse and they experienced no shockwave in the water.

 

[Aib Ld]

I found it interesting that the Orient Queen tipped in the direction of the blast, with no (visible) damage, and still sunk. Only two people died there and the rest are just injured.

 

[downloads]

I keep seeing videos like this and wondering if the people filming are still alive.
It sounds like the lady in this one is telling the filming person to get inside or get back.

The man's name is Imad and yeah you can hear her repeatedly telling Imad to get inside the house. According to their son, fortunately, they both survived with relatively little injuries (broken bones but not dead or permanently maimed). The translated video made it to the news here with the info from the son's twitter.

 

[Dorsia.Reservation]

I found it interesting that the Orient Queen tipped in the direction of the blast, with no (visible) damage

I can't find the article right now but according to surviving crew the inside is completely destroyed. She was listing but is as we see now, capsized.

The man's name is Imad and yeah you can hear her repeatedly telling Imad to get inside the house. According to their son, fortunately, they both survived with relatively little injuries (broken bones but not dead or permanently maimed). The translated video made it to the news here with the info from the son's twitter.

Thanks so much for the info.