Huge explosion in Beirut

[Genie]

Quote

A number of Beirut port officials are being placed under house arrest pending an investigation into Tuesday's huge explosion, Lebanon's government says.

The blast killed at least 135 people and injured more than 4,000 others. A two-week state of emergency has begun.

President Michel Aoun said the blast was caused by 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored unsafely in a warehouse.

Customs chief Badri Daher said his agency called for the chemical to be removed, but "this did not happen".

"We leave it to the experts to determine the reasons," he said.

Ammonium nitrate is used as a fertiliser in agriculture and as an explosive.

Opening an emergency cabinet meeting on Wednesday, President Aoun said: "No words can describe the horror that has hit Beirut last night, turning it into a disaster-stricken city".

Specialists at the University of Sheffield in the UK estimate that the blast had about one tenth of the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima during World War Two and was "unquestionably one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history".

Link to the beeb

[Awol]

Interesting cameo from Macron today, doing a walkabout in Beirut and telling locals he has a new plan for doing politics in their country. 

Man’s got no shortage of self-belief, I’ll give him that! 

[villakram]

17 hours ago, Awol said:

Interesting cameo from Macron today, doing a walkabout in Beirut and telling locals he has a new plan for doing politics in their country. 

Man’s got no shortage of self-belief, I’ll give him that! 

What they say, not what they do. Always listen to the Imperial representative from Goldman.

[sidcow]

Official death toll is currently 154.

I just can't believe this.  It was a midweek afternoon, its hard to imagine anyone in the port area surviving.  How many must work in such a large area, all those flattened buildings. 

All those houses and Tower blocks surrounding the port, you can see straight through some of those apartments. How did people survive? 

I am sure those figures are massively under reported. 

[chrisp65]

16 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Official death toll is currently 154.

I just can't believe this.  It was a midweek afternoon, its hard to imagine anyone in the port area surviving.  How many must work in such a large area, all those flattened buildings. 

All those houses and Tower blocks surrounding the port, you can see straight through some of those apartments. How did people survive? 

I am sure those figures are massively under reported. 

When the timber mill blew up in Bosley in Cheshire in 2015, it was reported 4 presumed killed, bodies not recovered.

I would imagine something similar here. What records will there be, to know how many bodies are being looked for?

[sidcow]

6 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

When the timber mill blew up in Bosley in Cheshire in 2015, it was reported 4 presumed killed, bodies not recovered.

I would imagine something similar here. What records will there be, to know how many bodies are being looked for?

That was in a rural location and about 10,000th of the size.  There will be missing presumed dead, employment records. All sorts of records. 

It was a massive industrial area completely flattened. 

[Seat68]

41 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Official death toll is currently 154.

I just can't believe this.  It was a midweek afternoon, its hard to imagine anyone in the port area surviving.  How many must work in such a large area, all those flattened buildings. 

All those houses and Tower blocks surrounding the port, you can see straight through some of those apartments. How did people survive? 

I am sure those figures are massively under reported. 

In all fairness to report a death, you have to find a body. It will move up over time. 

[chrisp65]

14 minutes ago, sidcow said:

That was in a rural location and about 10,000th of the size.  There will be missing presumed dead, employment records. All sorts of records. 

It was a massive industrial area completely flattened. 

There are so many variables.

A dock area might have lots of people, it might be close to deserted. I live close to a dock, acres upon acres of stacked up empty shipping containers, not a soul around as far as the eye can see. So with some little luck, all those flipped trucks and burnt cars and stubs of buildings, there is a chance there were very few people there. It doesn’t require many people to ‘man’ a grain silo and warehouses.

By the time the shock wave and debris were further on, hopefully it was a little less lethal.

It will be a higher death toll I’m sure. But hopefully it’s a spectacle of property damage more than it’s lost human life. More a hope than any claim of fact.

[mjmooney]

On 04/08/2020 at 20:01, HanoiVillan said:

The explosion that happened in the harbour of Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1917 is the nearest analogy I can think of to the size and scale of this disaster, and that left 2,000 dead, so sadly I'd expect to see something in that vicinity, possibly even more given its apparent proximity to the centre of the city.

Quote

The 1947 Texas City disaster was an industrial accident that occurred on April 16, 1947, in the Port of Texas City, Texas, at Galveston Bay. It was the deadliest industrial accident in United States history and one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions. A mid-morning fire started on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp (docked in the port) and detonated her cargo of about 2,300 tons (about 2,100 metric tons) of ammonium nitrate. This started a chain reaction of fires and explosions in other ships and nearby oil-storage facilities, ultimately killing at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department.

Wiki

[villakram]

They were really luck in that the grain silo acted as a blast shield for a large part of the downtown area.

[Spoony]

So sad reading about this. I adore Beirut and Lebanon as a whole. Such a wonderful country with wonderful people they do not deserve all the shit they have to put up with due to corruption, violent factions and years upon years of mismanagement. The people just want to live in peace and the party scene there is so great mainly because you just don’t know when shit will kick off again. 

[mjmooney]

6 minutes ago, Spoony said:

So sad reading about this. I adore Beirut and Lebanon as a whole. Such a wonderful country with wonderful people they do not deserve all the shit they have to put up with due to corruption, violent factions and years upon years of mismanagement. The people just want to live in peace and the party scene there is so great mainly because you just don’t know when shit will kick off again. 

I agree. A place that has had to put up with so much shit. I've been, and I met loads of nice people there. 

[brommy]

On 08/08/2020 at 15:30, sidcow said:

Official death toll is currently 154.

I just can't believe this.  It was a midweek afternoon, its hard to imagine anyone in the port area surviving.  How many must work in such a large area, all those flattened buildings. 

All those houses and Tower blocks surrounding the port, you can see straight through some of those apartments. How did people survive? 

I am sure those figures are massively under reported. 

Currently reported as 220 found dead with a further 110 missing. Over 300 dead seems believable and would be much higher if nearly half the blast wasn’t out to sea and was immediately towards residential areas. Difficult to call it fortunate.

[Awol]

Entire government has resigned. Lots of players outside the country will be working full tilt to shape what replaces them. 

[Genie]

8 hours ago, Awol said:

Entire government has resigned. Lots of players outside the country will be working full tilt to shape what replaces them. 

I saw this on the news last night, I don’t pretend to know the details of the local politics but I thought in general it was probably a good thing that fresh people come in who do not need to cover their arses with what they should have done previously. At least this way they can focus 100% on sorting the mess out.

[Awol]

28 minutes ago, Genie said:

I saw this on the news last night, I don’t pretend to know the details of the local politics but I thought in general it was probably a good thing that fresh people come in who do not need to cover their arses with what they should have done previously. At least this way they can focus 100% on sorting the mess out.

Yes, absolutely, it’s just a deeply complex scenario domestically.

At the end of the civil war the peace deal baked in a certain amount of political representation from each sectarian group (Sunni, Shia, Christian and Druze) which was necessary to stop the fighting, but also perpetuated sectarian identity as a primary driver of politics. 

On top of that you have Hezbollah, created and funded by Iran and operating as a participant in the political institutions, but also as a shadow state and military force. 

The legitimate Lebanese military receives aid from the US and France but is actually weaker than Hezbollah. Political corruption is endemic, the economy is buggered and 1/4 of the total population is Syrian refugees which puts even more stress on the system. 

All of the major powers in the region compete for political influence and encourage corruption to enable that, destabilising the country by design. 

That’s a grossly simplified summary but gives a flavour of the complexity.