This 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 It's not nearly at the scale of Beirut, but it killed 23 people.
Not 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/...
Beirut Port Explosion
101–110 of 226 posts
Re: Beirut Port Explosion
#102From 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?
and some alleged welding sparks in the same location
totally crazy! there has to be more to the story
Re: Beirut Port Explosion
#103From 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?
From 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.
Re: Beirut Port Explosion
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean it will, just socially and financially.
Sorry, as someone who doesn't use Facebook, how does Facebook have the power make me disappear, socially and financially?
If you ARE using Facebook socially, they can turn down who sees your communications...kinda like shadowbanning.
Re: Beirut Port Explosion
#105I'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
Re: Beirut Port Explosion
#106What's the opposite of Augmented Reality? This does such a great job to overlay real-world video and photography onto a 3D simulation.
I would call most of what was done in this presentation Photogrammetry
Re: Beirut Port Explosion
#107In 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 rep…
Everybody have some agenda, whoever collects and analyse the information now, whether it is the NYT or NGOs or a board in 4chan, they all have some agenda and they all want to leverage it to push their agenda.
Re: Beirut Port Explosion
#108From 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?
From 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 n…
>I'm somewhat mystified as to who exactly it is that recklessly put the ammonium nitrate where it is
Some underpaid and undereducated laborers. Unfortunately, this society did not have sufficiently developed governance to force the proper storage of ammonium nitrate. There were multiple warnings issued over the years, and multiple mandates by the judicial system, but the political will to spend the money to move it did not exist, so it did not get moved.
Re: Beirut Port Explosion
#109I've watched an exhibition by Forensic Architecture a few months ago in Gothenburg and was blown away by it.
Incredible and inspiring work.
Re: Beirut Port Explosion
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
OSINT is certainly a thing, but there's a parallel development in shamelessness and polarization so that accurate reporting of the real history of events makes much less difference. Are there that many people whose support of the police will be shaken by the NYT report, or is the support of the police a matter of political affiliation that leads them to dismiss it as "biased"?
You've reduced this to only two possible positions: support the police or don't support them. How polarizing is that? What about supporting the need for police while also supporting a need for reforming the police? I doubt there are even many cops that would disagree with a need for reform to some degree. But creating two extreme positions, and then lumping everyone into those positions, is called politics and is con…
Very few people outside the anarchocommunist subreddits think police are unnecessary. Reform vs police-are-untouchable are the two major wings in the US.