Wednesday 5 August 2020

The Lebanon


That shocking blast in Beirut was from a 3/ 750/ now 3000 ton stockpile of ammonium nitrate in a single warehouse at the docks. Ammonium nitrate was the favoured ingredient of the IRA and many others after them. You mix it with diesel and it is ready to go. Just two easily available things to steal to make a one-ton lorry bomb - farm fertiliser in 25 kilo bags and the same stuff you put in the lorry.

Ammonium nitrate is a comparatively slow burn. It is not a high explosive. It is categorised as an oxidant. I know many quarries which use it to blast rock. You drill a series of holes in the top of a cliff, put down a tiny charge of high explosive (the size of a penny banger) then fill the hole from the top with fertiliser and diesel blended in a cement mixer. The dynamite acts as a detonator and the burn begins at the bottom of the hole and works its way up in about a second. The explosion is fractionally less instant than H.E.

There was supposed to have been a fire in the warehouse before the explosion, but you have to wonder what three tons of ammonium nitrate was doing in the Lebanon in the first place. The country has no agriculture to speak of, so would not need to stockpile fertiliser. They import all their food, and the imports all come through the docks. Thousands of tons of imported grain were destroyed in the blast, adding further misery to an already miserable country.

The corrupt government must have realised that this much ammonium nitrate so close to the city centre would be a gift to any hostile country intent on causing damage. One jet fighter sending one small rocket into the warehouse would have produced exactly the same effect.

This may be a coincidence, but I heard a woman say that - just before the explosion - people looked out of their windows to see a fighter plane going low and fast over Beirut and wondered what was going on.

The Lebanon used to be such a beautiful country.

18 comments:

  1. The damage is awful. You would think things couldn’t get worse for a country that has been bankrupted by corrupt politicians. Though the banker are equally to blame, running in effect a Ponzi scheme.

    As you say a beautiful country. Fantastic food and wine, and the weather’s not bad either.

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  2. Apparently the fertilizer cane from a shop sailing to Mozambique that docked in Beirut because it was having technical problems. The Port State Control inspected the ship and forbade it from sailing.

    The fertilizer was eventually unloaded and put into warehouses. Where it remained for almost nine years.

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    1. Yes, I have now heard this. The country is well and truly finished now. Let's hope some good may eventually come from this.

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  3. The devastation had me in tears - I kinow I can do absolutely nothing about it and that makes it all the worse. The world is becoming an appalling place to live - and as individuals we are helpless and can only look on - terrible.

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    1. The world does seem very bleak right now, I agree Weave. It is so sad.

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  4. Too early to speculate on cause I think. We used to store 500 tonnes of AN in 500kg bags for a German manufacturer. My brother always said it would take the town with it if it went up. The local constabulary Anti-Terror Squad used to visit annually. Dreadful catastrophe for Beirut, however,
    they do have a lot of expertise on rebuilding which they have done over and over again in the past.

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    1. Not speculation. It is now being reported as this in the UK press. When I commented it was known in Beirut. Internal Security raised a report to PM Hariri last year warning of the danger. 4 judges over the years and two heads of ports and customs and nobody did anything And now this.

      To say they have a lot of experience rebuilding sounds a little heartless. The city was close to its knees before this because of the economic meltdown. Friends who were there through the civil war, the 2006 war and the assignation of Rafic Hariri say that this is the worst they have seen.

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    2. I hadn't read your comment Traveller I was responding to Tom's post.

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    3. Yes. The stuff had been there so long it sweated like dynamite does - also a nitrate. There is also now speculation that the delay in removing it may have been exploited by some group of maniacs. Explosive experts would look at a pile like that and either be very worried or rub their hands in glee.

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  5. Now they are saying that a welder sparked a fire, which set off stored fireworks(?) and led to the explosion. Despite what Trump says, it does seem to have been a tragic accident.
    I went to bed feeling like Weave - that the world is becoming an appalling place to live, but of course, it has been dificult for so many all the time.

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    1. As I understand it, fresh A.N. will just burn fiercely unless it has an agent such as diesel or sugar to provide a quicker oxygen burn. This stuff had been there for 6-9 years, so had become highly unstable in any case.

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  6. Of course, the stockpile was 750 tons, not the 3 they mentioned this morning. 3 tons could not have done that.

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  7. What with one thing and another, this is proving to be a bloody awful year and it's still only August.

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    1. It is difficult to see the future for everyone now, small and large scale. Us baby boomers thought we got away with it.

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  8. Yes, we had a lunatic load a U-Haul truck with fertilizer and blow up the Federal Building in Oklahoma city.
    But this was sabotage no matter who you blame, the government, the warehouse owners, all the words I cannot think of of the chain of people involved. I hope something better comes of this. But what justice is there for Lebanon.

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    1. People think that this was an inevitable event amongst many possible ones caused by a corrupt and incompetent government - in the long run.

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    2. Corrupt and incompetent governments, there are plenty of them around the world. Including ours, it seems.

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