Beirut explosion

Mowich

Mowich

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Walter said:
Qui benefacit animae? Who benefits?
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No one, Walter. Most especially not the people of Lebanon who were long ago abandoned by their corrupt government and are now almost completely on their own save for any help coming from the rest of the world, which truth be known will just be a drop in the bucket considering the possibly trillions it will take to rebuild the harbor and repair/rebuild all the damage done by the blasts to infrastructure.
 
Mowich

Mowich

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Tecumsehsbones said:
For perspective, the blast was at the harbor, which argues pretty strongly it was a ship going up.

Just like what happened in Texas City, Texas, in 1947.
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I'm a bit of a disaster junkie, Tec........but had not heard of that one so went online and read about it.

The difference between this Texas City disaster, at least from what I read, is that anyone who did know how volatile and explosive ammonia nitrate could be were obviously not around when the ship was being loaded else better precautions would have been taken.


Whereas in the Beirut situation, the powers that be were well aware that they had allowed a Russian freighter loaded with the shit to sit at their dock for years.............and did nothing.
 
Mowich

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Girth said:
This blast has more in common with the Halifax munitions ship explosion in 1917, that leveled half of the city. 2,000 people died out of a total population of 95,000. For comparison sakes, Beirut has over 2,000,000 people.
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Uh, no.............Tec was right to cite the Texas City explosion for the simple reason that in both these cases it is/was ammonium nitrate that caused the explosions. Whereas, in your example, it was munitions.


The death toll could easily be in the tens of thousands, when all is said and done.
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Ten of thousands might be a bit over the top regarding eventual death toll, Girth. Bad enough that thousands have been severely injured and that at least two major hospitals almost leveled by the blast.
 
Tecumsehsbones

Tecumsehsbones

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The summary on the news now is that a Russian ship made an unscheduled stop in Beirut and offloaded 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in 2014. Then the owner went bankrupt and. . . nothing happened. There are reports that the warehouse keepers sent messages "up the chain" on at least six occasions saying "Um. . . guys? We have nearly three thousand tonnes of explosives improperly stored in a warehouse just waiting to blow the city to hell. Can we get a hand here? Or at least some direction on what to do about it?"

No response.

This was the predictable result of a dysfunctional port authority, symptomatic of a dysfunctional, indifferent government. Now they've arrested six guys, basically at random, to be the fall guys.

Poor bastards.
 
Mowich

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Tecumsehsbones said:
The summary on the news now is that a Russian ship made an unscheduled stop in Beirut and offloaded 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in 2014. Then the owner went bankrupt and. . . nothing happened. There are reports that the warehouse keepers sent messages "up the chain" on at least six occasions saying "Um. . . guys? We have nearly three thousand tonnes of explosives improperly stored in a warehouse just waiting to blow the city to hell. Can we get a hand here? Or at least some direction on what to do about it?"

No response.

This was the predictable result of a dysfunctional port authority, symptomatic of a dysfunctional, indifferent government. Now they've arrested six guys, basically at random, to be the fall guys.

Poor bastards.
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That about sums up what I've been reading about this, Tec. The NY Times did a pretty good background story on the ship and it's contents and the subsequent refusal of the government to do anything to protect the port/city/people from just such a horrendous disaster.
 
Mowich

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Girth said:
How can anyone forget about almost 3,000 kg of explosive material?
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From what I've been reading about the Lebanese government, I doubt they gave a shit, Girth. They were far too busy padding their own pockets.

Heads should roll.
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Oh they will - thing is it won't be the ones that should.
 
Walter

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Mowich said:
From what I've been reading about the Lebanese government, I doubt they gave a shit, Girth. They were far too busy padding their own pockets.
Oh they will - thing is it won't be the ones that should.
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2,750 tons is about 2,5000,000 kg.
 
taxslave

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There are some oddities which we may never know the truth about. First off Ammonium Nitrate is very stable and to make an explosive that works worth a shit it requires diesel fuel added. It requires a fairly substantial explosion to set it off even then. The approved method of disposing of ANFO is burning, it is that stable.
I heard today that there were fireworks stored in the same warehouse. That potentially could set off an explosion if a large enough fireworks exploded in the fertilizer. Then the question is what set off the fireworks?
 
taxslave

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Tecumsehsbones said:
"2,5000,000."
Yes, he actually wrote that.
NB: For anybody who's interested, a "tonne" (AKA a "metric ton" or "long ton") is 1000 kg, or 2205 pounds. Ergo, 2750 tonnes is exactly 2,750,000 kg.
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Wow.An American that does metric. Amazing what you can do with an Iphone these daze. Maybe you could give wally a few math lessons. ANd make him write out the work cause I want to see how he came up with the 2 1/2 million lbs.
 
Walter

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taxslave said:
Wow.An American that does metric. Amazing what you can do with an Iphone these daze. Maybe you could give wally a few math lessons. ANd make him write out the work cause I want to see how he came up with the 2 1/2 million lbs.
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I came up with about 2,500,000kg, nothing about pounds. Tons with one n is imperial measurement.
 
taxslave

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I still see 2 750 000 kg. Unless the new math changed how many kgs are in a tonne. But I used my fingers instead of a made in china calculator.
 
Walter

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taxslave said:
I still see 2 750 000 kg. Unless the new math changed how many kgs are in a tonne. But I used my fingers instead of a made in china calculator.
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Estimation is a tool all mathematicians use. The original unit was tons not tonnes.
 
gerryh

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Walter said:
Estimation is a tool all mathematicians use. The original unit was tons not tonnes.
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No, the original unit reported in the news articles from Beirut was metric tons, or tonnes. Not the imperial tons. It was 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate. So TB is dead on and you're out to lunch, as usual.
 
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Walter

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gerryh said:
No, the original unit reported in the news articles from Beirut was metric tons, or tonnes. Not the imperial tons. It was 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate. So TB is dead on and you're out to lunch, as usual.
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Well, I missed the metric part of tons then. I don’t believe the werd metric was in any of the posts before my estimation.
 
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