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Beirut Port Explosion

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Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#161

Post by ineedasername »

louwrentius wrote: post #19

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.

I would hope that every person in any type of supervisory role over a warehouse took this as an opportunity to say "Oh f*ck I need to make sure my warehouse isn't next"

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#162

Post by rtkwe »

notrealpersonq wrote: post #41
jandrese wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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?

From 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

> 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.

It was seized, it belongs to the government at that point there was no one to come claim it. It was their job to safely store and dispose of in some manner.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#163

Post by ineedasername »

rtkwe wrote: post #159
amai wrote: post #131

They 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?

It 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…

It 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.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#164

Post by ineedasername »

notrealpersonq wrote: post #41
jandrese wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 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?

From 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

the welders did their job and left, then the fire started later.

Are you familiar with tire fires? That's what the welders set off. These are not rapid combustive fires, they are slow burners that take some time to really get going. The fully expected result of welding setting off a tire fire is that it would smolder and get worse over a prolonged period of time (compared to an explosion)

* they never question why 2 tons of unclaimed ammonium nitrate was just sitting in the warehouse for 5-6 years*

It's been fairly well reported in other outlets that concerns were raised about the conditions in the warehouse, and then ignored.

jets

Jets fly, literally, everywhere.

intentional

No analysis has suggested this except conspiracy theory speculation

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#165

Post by mumblemumble »

holler wrote: post #102
tsjq wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and some alleged welding sparks in the same location

totally crazy! there has to be more to the story

There 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.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#166

Post by rtkwe »

notrealpersonq wrote: post #116
Eduard wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are several videos showing flying objects and several people reporting that jets were flying. [...] I will say it again, there exists SEVERAL different videos that show this. Where are these videos?

https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/planes-heard-seen-in-skies-of-... Here's one article that talks about it. Again, there are plenty of doctored videos that are obviously fake but this article does not use them. And people here seem to assume that me asking about it means that I believe that that it was an air strike. All I am saying is that I wished Forensic Architecture had tackled these subjects as well and debunked th…

So this one right [0] which is from right before the fireworks went off. What you're hearing is a lot of small explosions from fireworks going off around the edges before the main mass goes off, there's similar sounds in a lot of other videos of burning fireworks it's just a bunch of very small fireworks going off.

There's no other actual evidence of strikes none of the cameras seems to have caught the missile or bomb which with so many cameras watching the same thing you would have had one catch a frame at least of it and no one's found it.

[0] https://youtu.be/tFR1PJnLwg0?t=60

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#167

Post by gridspy »

yyyk wrote: post #71

This 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…

Important source material to consider this question is [0] "Lebanon blast: Ammonium nitrate behind many industrial accidents"

Basically the AN is an oxidizer and as such a chemical that "intensifies combustion" and so must not be combined with fuel or oil.

Since it was contaminated, the contaminants are potentially combustable themselves. The warehouse was also likely filled with partially combusted gases from the tyres, fireworks or other burning material.

So the explosion that did occur was not just the Ammonium Nitrate, but a mixture.

As other writers have discussed, the blast would not have fully involved all the material either - some would be lost and some would remain unburnt.

[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/5/lebanon-blast-ammoni...

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#168

Post by fingerlocks »

jeromegv wrote: post #160
philwelch wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your source? That seems extremely specious to me, for two reasons. First, the US does not technically have a two-party system. If your standard is how many parties have seats in the national legislature or parliament, the US has three parties represented since Justin Amash is now affiliated with the Libertarian Party, as well as a few independents. Secondly, many countries only have two parties that really mat…

The typical third party in Canada is NDP, which has had support between 15-25% of the vote within the last decade depending on the election. Which is quite different and quite more than the Libertarian party in the USA which has a very negligible influence. They also have been in power within a few provinces quite frequently. I don't think Canada was your best pick to make your point.

Independents won almost 20% of the popular vote in the 1992 U.S. general election. Also hold more seats in Congress. That’s a more apt comparison, not the Libertarian Party.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#169

Post by gridspy »

thro1 wrote: post #129

From 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 wi…

Standard 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

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#170

Post by philwelch »

jeromegv wrote: post #160
philwelch wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your source? That seems extremely specious to me, for two reasons. First, the US does not technically have a two-party system. If your standard is how many parties have seats in the national legislature or parliament, the US has three parties represented since Justin Amash is now affiliated with the Libertarian Party, as well as a few independents. Secondly, many countries only have two parties that really mat…

The typical third party in Canada is NDP, which has had support between 15-25% of the vote within the last decade depending on the election. Which is quite different and quite more than the Libertarian party in the USA which has a very negligible influence. They also have been in power within a few provinces quite frequently. I don't think Canada was your best pick to make your point.

NDP won fewer seats than Bloc Québécois in the last election. And it’s worth pointing out, I think, that the most prominent US politician who would be aligned with the NDP ideologically, Bernie Sanders, is actually an independent rather than a Democrat.
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