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Beirut Port Explosion

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Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#171

Post by bigiain »

aosaigh wrote: post #14

I hadn't seen the leaked footage and photos from inside the warehouse, nor the videos from the firefighters before the explosion. Very interesting. This website (and organisation) is fascinating. There are other excellent videos on the site, for example: https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/the-killing-...

> nor the videos from the firefighters before the explosion.

There were a few bits of video footage where I watched on horrified thinking "I wonder how they got hold of that memory card, because there's no way whoever filmed that got out alive..."

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#172

Post by bigbubba »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #108
jcranmer wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

How much money would it really have cost? Worse case they conscript a dozen guys with plastic snow shovels to dump it onto the water. That would be very far from ideal, but a hell of a lot better than half the city blowing up.

If they paid a dozen guys double the minimum wage for Lebanon and it took a whole month, that would be about $10,000.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#173

Post by kqr »

bigbubba wrote: post #172
lotsofpulp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 d…

How much money would it really have cost? Worse case they conscript a dozen guys with plastic snow shovels to dump it onto the water. That would be very far from ideal, but a hell of a lot better than half the city blowing up. If they paid a dozen guys double the minimum wage for Lebanon and it took a whole month, that would be about $10,000.

They were probably not deciding between moving the AN or twiddling their thumbs. They were likely faced with a thousand other prospective things to do, many of which seemed more important than the AN.

After all, the AN had been lying there without blowing up for years, so surely someone else is keeping tabs on that too.

----

What I'm saying is that it's easy in hindsight to see how stupid a decision was, but to the actors at the time they were facing a much more complicated situation with less obvious tradeoffs.

Until we accept this, we will only have finger-pointing blame assigned and accidents will keep happening, because we'll just install new humans in the same flawed system that created the accident.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#174

Post by zxcmx »

holler wrote: post #79

From 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?

Have you ever thought about your house? The whole damn thing is fuel.

Do you store things in the attic? plastic tubs? How about the basement? cardboard? Do you have wool, paintings, plastic toys, plastic anything, wooden anything? Look around you and the places you keep things. Oh my god curtains they are more or less just flame conduits.

Your couches, your clothes, everything around you is fuel for a massive fire. It can be a bit scary when you really evaluate it. I bet you have never thought seriously about the risk before.

Admittedly at a city level, 3 kilotons of ammonium nitrate in a strategic location should definitely have set off some real thinking but on a personal basis most people are surrounded by fuel and don't think about it at all.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#175

Post by rexarex »

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.

Canada has only ever been ruled by the liberal or conservative parties

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#176

Post by interestica »

dplavery92 wrote: post #106
interestica wrote: post #29

What'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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry

Yeah. But the most interesting visuals to me were the placement of 'leaked images' in the virtual warehouse. It had the effect of contextualizing those photos and, for lack of a better term, exploding them. The value to me is what it did to the photos rather than what the photos did to the creation of the space.

I'm not sure these instances fall under the photogrammetry umbrella.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#177

Post by serf »

zxcmx wrote: post #174
holler wrote: post #79

From 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?

Have you ever thought about your house? The whole damn thing is fuel. Do you store things in the attic? plastic tubs? How about the basement? cardboard? Do you have wool, paintings, plastic toys, plastic anything, wooden anything? Look around you and the places you keep things. Oh my god curtains they are more or less just flame conduits. Your couches, your clothes, everything around you is fuel for a massive fire. I…

> Have you ever thought about your house? The whole damn thing is fuel.

analogizing a house, the purpose of which is to store and house human occupants, ran by non-professionals, to a dock store-house that houses hazardous compounds and is staffed by employees is pretty useless.

Yes, most everything is fuel.

Storing large amounts of explosive chemicals is beyond the scope of purpose behind a household.

Dock storehouses routinely deal with hazardous/dangerous goods. They are built to do so with the premise that the staff that run them will follow strict (and in most cases clearly written) guidelines.

In other words : I don't need to demonstrate explosion-readiness as a strict rule before home ownership -- but most countries require groups that house and manipulate explosive or combustible goods to demonstrate both their skill in manipulation, and their disaster planning in the worst case.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#178

Post by redis_mlc »

bredren wrote: post #26

In 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…

> the downing of Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752. That loose set of content eventually forced the Iranian government to admit responsibility.

I read about that case in detail, and it's not as clear as the initial reporting.

It was a tough one since you can't tell with any certainty which airplanes are truly friendly or not. Iran was in a state of heightened alert because of disagreements with the US. (Some countries, like Israel, use civilian airliners and routes as cover for military flights.)

A related example is how Iraq used a civilian Dassault F-50 jet upgraded with Mirage electronics (radar, launch rails) for a number of clandestine military flights around the Middle East, including the flight that hit the USS Stark with 2 Exocet missiles. (The Stark's fire control system apparently didn't recognize the F-50 as a threat, even though it had a fighter escort.)

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#179

Post by gamblor956 »

zxcmx wrote: post #174
holler wrote: post #79

From 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?

Have you ever thought about your house? The whole damn thing is fuel. Do you store things in the attic? plastic tubs? How about the basement? cardboard? Do you have wool, paintings, plastic toys, plastic anything, wooden anything? Look around you and the places you keep things. Oh my god curtains they are more or less just flame conduits. Your couches, your clothes, everything around you is fuel for a massive fire. I…

on a personal basis most people are surrounded by fuel and don't think about it at all.

That is because we have safety standards that are explicitly designed to address those risks.

Re: Beirut Port Explosion

#180

Post by bamboleo »

throwaway7281 wrote: post #5

Excellent video. We have the tech and skill to reconstruct reality, at the same time we do not possess the skill to let reason rule critical parts of our (here: Beirut's) infrastructure. As humankind, we are probably closer than ever to hassle free life and we will nevertheless go down skirmishing and fighting.

It's hard to lump this kind of excellence into a "we."

"We" Albert Einstein are prodigies. "We" anti-vax are very far from the other end of "we"

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