I heard it was caused by improperly stored ammonium nitrate. Like a 2,750-ton stockpile of ammonium nitrate.
www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/world/middleeast/beirut-explosion-what-happened.htmlWhat We Know and Don’t Know About the Beirut Explosions
By Austin Ramzy and Elian Peltier
Published Aug. 5, 2020
Updated Aug. 7, 2020, 9:45 a.m. ET
At least 154 people were killed, and the second blast was felt as far away as Cyprus. An investigation and a search for survivors are continuing.
A pair of explosions, the second much bigger than the first, struck the city of Beirut early Tuesday evening, killing at least 154 people, wounding more than 5,000 and causing widespread damage. Over 1,000 people have been hospitalized, and 120 were still in critical condition on Friday, according to Lebanon’s health minister, Hamad Hassan.
The second blast sent a billowing, reddish plume high above the city’s port and created a shock wave that shattered glass for miles. On Wednesday, despite a huge search operation, dozens were still missing in the city, the capital of Lebanon, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean.
As the authorities piece together what happened, here is a look at what we know and what we don’t.
What caused the explosions?
The exact cause remains undetermined, but a fire ravaged a port warehouse around 6 p.m. There were two explosions, a smaller one that was followed seconds later by a larger blast that destroyed huge swathes of the city.
Officials say the second, more devastating explosion most likely came from a nearby 2,750-ton stockpile of ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical often used as fertilizer, which Prime Minister Hassan Diab said had been stored in a depot for six years.
Investigators will try to determine whether the blasts were accidents or intentionally triggered. On Friday, president Michel Aoun of Lebanon told reporters in Beirut that an investigation would explore the possibility that “external interference,” such as a rocket or a bomb, caused the explosions.
The ammonium nitrate that exploded came from a Russian-owned vessel that stopped in Beirut while it was sailing in November 2013 from Georgia to Mozambique. The ship was abandoned, and the cargo is believed to have been offloaded to the port’s warehouses, the site of the explosion on Tuesday.
The blasts occurred at the Beirut port, in the north of the city, where it caused severe damage to buildings, warehouses and grain silos. The port has long been a critical link in the country’s supply chain for goods including food and medicine, handling 60 percent of the country’s overall imports, according to S&P Global.
The silos that were damaged or destroyed store 85 percent of the country’s grain, and the authorities said that the wheat that had survived was now inedible.
Beyond the industrial waterfront, the explosions tore through popular nightlife and shopping districts and densely populated neighborhoods. More than 750,000 people live in the parts of the city that were damaged, and more than 250,000 have been displaced.
Even before the explosions, Lebanon had been suffering from a series of crises, including the plunging value of its currency, an influx of refugees from neighboring Syria and the coronavirus pandemic. Since last fall, waves of protesters have taken to the streets to vent anger with Lebanon’s political elite over what they consider the mismanagement of the country.
How big were the blasts?
The second explosion was like an earthquake, witnesses said, and was felt in Cyprus, more than 100 miles away. The seismic waves that the explosion caused were equivalent to a 3.3-magnitude earthquake, according to the United States Geological Survey.
It remains unclear how the ammonium nitrate was stored in the warehouse, which would affect its explosive power. But the chemical can be up to 40 percent as powerful as TNT.
Ammonium nitrate explosions have caused a number of disasters before. A ship carrying about 2,000 tons of the compound caught fire and exploded in Texas City, Texas, in 1947, killing 581 people. About two tons of the chemical were used in the 1995 terrorist bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people.
More recently, an explosion at a factory in the southern French city of Toulouse killed 31 people in 2001. In 2013, 15 people were killed in an explosion at a West Fertilizer Company plant in Texas; and in 2015, more than 150 people were killed at one of China’s busiest seaports, Tianjin, after hundreds of tons of ammonium nitrate, among other chemicals, exploded.
How bad was the damage?
Ceilings collapsed, walls and windows were blown out and debris was found far as two miles from the port. Cars and a 390-foot-long cruise ship 1,500 feet away were flipped, and rubble from shattered buildings filled city streets. Near the site of the explosion, a ship was blasted out of the water and landed on a dock.
The governor of Beirut, Marwan Aboud, told reporters on Wednesday that half of the city had been damaged, with the financial toll expected to surpass $3 billion.
Several hospitals were damaged, four of them so severely that they could not admit patients, doctors said. At the Bikhazi Medical Group hospital in the center of the city, a ceiling fell on some patients, the hospital director said. Many doctors and nurses were also killed in the blast.
Hamad Hasan, Lebanon’s health minister, said in a televised address that government warehouses had been damaged, and that the country was “running short of everything necessary to rescue” and treat victims.
What does it mean for the coronavirus response?
The spread of the disease has been limited in Lebanon, which has reported less than 6,000 people infected with the virus and 70 deaths, but the United Nations said it recorded 255 new cases on Thursday, a daily record, and some of most active areas of community transmission were in neighborhoods devastated by the blast.
The explosion destroyed 17 containers filled with hundreds of thousands of masks, gowns, gloves and other personal protective equipment needed for medical staff battling the pandemic, the World Health Organization said.
The World Health Organization and UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency, said they were bringing in replacement supplies of personal protective equipment from logistics hubs in Dubai, but appealed for funding to support relief efforts and the coronavirus response.
What comes next?
As doctors treat the wounded and hope that missing people have survived become slimmer, many countries and international aid organizations have moved to provide emergency aid to Lebanon.
The investigation into the disaster is likely to focus on why so much ammonium nitrate was stored at the port, and who made the decision to let a highly combustible substance sit there for years.
From 2014 to 2017, senior customs officials repeatedly sought guidance from Lebanese courts on how to dispose of the ammonium nitrate, according to public records, but the judiciary appears to have failed to reply to the requests.
Mr. Diab, the prime minister, has vowed that the explosions won’t “fly by without accountability,” but in a country marred by decades of corruption, many in Lebanon were skeptical that any high-profile figures would face consequences.
President Emmanuel Macron of France visited Beirut on Thursday, where he promised to provide assistance, and told Lebanese crowds that aid to rebuild the city “will not go to corrupt hands.” Mr. Macron said a “new political pact” was needed in Lebanon to tackle corruption and the economic crisis that plague the country. “If reforms are not carried out, Lebanon will continue to sink,” Mr. Macron told reporters.
