Analysis of the Beirut explosion?!

[RCgothic]

We know thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate were stored there, and that the port authority were distinctly worried that it wasn't being dealt with. There a credible timeline for how it got there and the cause of the accident.

There is nothing else that could have generated a blast equivalent to hundreds of tonnes of TNT stored in that area on record, nor is any other explanation necessary to explain the damage.

Further speculation is unnecessary and unhelpful.

[sevenperforce]

Just now, RCgothic said:

We know thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate were stored there, and that the port authority were distinctly worried that it wasn't being dealt with. There a credible timeline for how it got there and the cause of the accident.

There is nothing else that could have generated a blast equivalent to hundreds of tonnes of TNT stored in that area on record, nor is any other explanation necessary to explain the damage.

Further speculation is unnecessary and unhelpful.

100% correct.

Also see USGS statement: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000b9bx/executive

Quote

The Beirut, Lebanon explosion was processed using the same basic methods that we use for regional earthquakes. To remove uncertainties in the location associated with seismic methods, we fix the location to the location seen in videos of the blast. Standard methods were used to calculate the magnitude. The reported magnitude is not directly comparable to an earthquake of similar size because the explosion occurred at the surface where seismic waves are not as efficiently generated. News reports state the explosion was caused by 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate which is roughly equivalent to 1100 tons of TNT.

 

As I mentioned above, a 3.3 on the Richter scale is comparable to a 1.3-kiloton nuclear warhead surface blast.

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, RCgothic said:

We know thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate were stored there, and that the port authority were distinctly worried that it wasn't being dealt with.

What's more, we know these thousands of tons have been there for six years. Ammonium nitrate gets touchy when it gets old, and it's a well-documented phenomenon. Nothing more to it. Really, you'd think after all these times it blew up, people would learn how to handle it. Not putting a fireworks warehouse next to it would be a good start. At least this time, nobody was trying to break it up with dynamite...

I hope the people responsible for the whole mess will soon be wishing they blew up along with that storage yard. This disaster was entirely preventable, if only someone had put some more thought into what goes where around the port.

[Gargamel]

Feel free to discuss the impact the explosion has had on you, I know I'm awed by it, and the technical discussion that involves figuring out the yield and such, it's what we tend to do here anyways.   But let's make sure to avoid posting anything that might contain pictures/videos of gore or injuries resulting from the explosion.  Nobody has yet that I have seen, but we all know the rules.  And until multiple official sources have confirmed any intentional acts, let's stay away from that topic too please. 

I can easily see how people would immediately think it was a small nuke, I know I would as it was going off in front of me.   We were discussing at work about how it was almost 75 years ago to the day....

[Arugela]

I've posted the actual footage at the beginning of the event. People were wondering about fireworks or what started the blast. Does that footage give hints as to how this started?

[K^2]

16 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

I can easily see how people would immediately think it was a small nuke, I know I would as it was going off in front of me.   We were discussing at work about how it was almost 75 years ago to the day....

Yeah, it's pretty natural to jump to such conclusions. I grew up in USSR next to a military base which had one of these unplanned explosions of their arsenal back in the late 80s. I got to watch the mushroom from it after the pressure wave forced open our windows and alerted us to the event. Based on the size of the small lake marking the site and stories from people who served there, it was something in the 20-50T range, most of the energy coming from a stockpile of AA missiles, probably S-300 or similar. Trying to find any additional information on the event hasn't gone anywhere, because the town with the military base was classified at the time, so even though it was early glasnost' times and a few papers did print that explosion took place, none of them named the place where it happened or any details.

Anyways, there were a lot of very concerned people for a while, until word of mouth spread some information about what happened. A lot of people initially thought it was a nuke and, well, no internet. Fortunately, the actual city I lived in is also home to Institute of Combustion and Explosion and a few other research centers. And if you were a theoretical physicist in these years, odds were good that your military training was in artillery or missiles, so the word that it's definitely not a nuke spread pretty quickly. My father's military training was in ICBM navigation, so his entire reaction was to take a look, close window, go back to eating food. But a lot of people had to get info from their neighbors, and until then, many assumed it was a nuke. At a guess, the only thing that prevented panic is that nobody was quite sure which side's nuke it would have been. Again, late 80's USSR. Attitudes were... cynical.

And yeah, that was much smaller explosion, with a much darker, sootier mushroom, and none of that magic cloud action, and a lot of people still thought it was a nuke. The fact that this was the first thought of many people in Beirut or rest of the world when watching the video is not surprising at all.

[kerbiloid]

Spoiler

(And every time I read your biopics, I get ensured moar and moar).

Did they change your classes schedule every time when an unplanned nuke explodes aside?

Edited August 6, 2020 by kerbiloid

[sevenperforce]

3 hours ago, Arugela said:

I've posted the actual footage at the beginning of the event. People were wondering about fireworks or what started the blast. Does that footage give hints as to how this started?

A careless welder ignited material inside a fireworks warehouse, which rapidly spread out of control. Eventually, the fireworks began to explode, spreading the blaze to the warehouse containing the ammonium nitrate. As @Dragon01 pointed out, the AN had been there for a long time and gets touchier the longer it sits around. I suspect there was significant hydrocarbon contamination, either from manufacturing or from environmental effects in storage.

The fireball size and radius of light blast damage -- out to 10 km according to some reports -- points to something close to a 2 kt blast. The only way to get that kind of blast out of 2750 tonnes of AN is if it has significant hydrocarbon content.

[DDE]

5 hours ago, Arugela said:

People were wondering about fireworks or what started the blast. Does that footage give hints as to how this started?

Direct footage of the site following the initial blast displays very bright but small flashes.

I think my initial judgement of these being fireworks still holds.

1 hour ago, sevenperforce said:

A careless welder ignited material inside a fireworks warehouse, which rapidly spread out of control.

Gee, did he pour some ClF5 on the floor while he was at it?

[kerbiloid]

As far as it's known, welders were working there exactly at that moment, enforcing the storehouse.

[Guest]

Gee, welding inside a fireworks warehouse. That's sitting right next to a huge pile of old, dirty fertilizer (of course there was hydrocarbon contamination, it sat in a port for six years). What's the worst thing that could happen? 

Well, this. There's a moral to this story. I'm sure everyone will remember it, at least until the next dolt needs a convenient place to store a well-behaved substance like, for example, nitroglycerin. 

[DDE]

4 hours ago, sevenperforce said:

I suspect there was significant hydrocarbon contamination, either from manufacturing or from environmental effects in storage.

Don't forget the crew selling the ship's remaining fuel to pay for their lawyer. I imagine the pumping was done rather haphazardly.

[KerikBalm]

3 hours ago, DDE said:

Direct footage of the site following the initial blast displays very bright but small flashes.

I think my initial judgement of these being fireworks still holds.

I agree, initial reports were talking about stored fireworks, and the numerous flahses support this.

 

15 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

Gee, welding inside a fireworks warehouse. That's sitting right next to a huge pile of old, dirty fertilizer (of course there was hydrocarbon contamination, it sat in a port for six years). What's the worst thing that could happen? 

Well, according to what I read (if I remember correctly), its kind of ironic.

Someone saw the appalling conditions in which this was store, there was a report citing several issues: the report cited short term issues and long term issues.

In the long term, they needed to get rid of the stuff. In the short term the report said that there was poor security, and some door didn't even close properly/there was an opening in the warehouse.

So the lebanese government was at least addressing the short term issue, and ordered that the door be fixed to increase security in the short term, and the welding was related to fixing the warehouse.

I wish I can recall where I read that, I'd cite it... but it seems that they were aware of the issue, and were actually taking a first step to address it, when they caused the explosion.

[Guest]

Many times, that's how these things happen. A shortsighted response is often worse than no response at all. Of course, lack of response can lead to a disaster, too, but the key here is to very carefully consider what is being done. That goes double when dealing with that much AN. Well-meaning idiocy is, quite frequently, more damaging than deliberate sabotage.

Also, the first question should be, "why there were fireworks stored next to a huge pile of AN?". Because that's one thing that definitely shouldn't have been where it was. Welding inside an warehouse containing AN, even if it's pretty old, likely wouldn't have set it off. It's touchy but not a primary explosive. Gunpowder very much is (that's the point) and setting off a primary to light off a secondary is literally the recipe for a bomb. So the true culprit was whoever was in charge of deciding what is stored in which warehouse. Now, the rest of the people in charge of the operation should have been aware of this risk, and even one of the welding crew could have noticed the danger and refused to do anything more until that's fixed, but ultimately, someone put fireworks next to a pile of fertilizer, and this is a bad idea recognizable by anyone with a lick of common sense and a high school chemistry education.

[KerikBalm]

2 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

the first question should be, "why there were fireworks stored next to a huge pile of AN?" ...  ultimately, someone put fireworks next to a pile of fertilizer, and this is a bad idea recognizable by anyone with a lick of common sense and a high school chemistry education.

The thing is, that AN had been there for 7 years... I imagine that fireworks come and go. The question is if hte people who put the fireworks there even knew that AN was in the warehouse. I can imagine that it was just lying there, not conspicuously labelled, and people just forgot that it was there, and normal day to day port operations went on. Its a port, and I don't think lebanon manufatures its own fireworks (but they use them for various celebrations... they like to have big parties - I've been in Beirut and went to a Lebanese wedding, I actually staying in a hotel that would have been within the damage area - but probably just shattered glass, there don't seem to be any building collapses that far from the explosion).

So, a shipment of fireworks comes in to the port, where do they offload it? into the warehouse... was anyone involved even consciously aware that there were thousands of tons of AN stored in that warehouse?

[Guest]

They definitely should have been, though. Ammonium nitrate is well known to be dangerous. And the port would have multiple storage areas, would it have been so hard to pick one that's not next to a fertilizer silo? I'm pretty sure that when a ship is unloading, they don't just pick a warehouse at random and offload stuff into it, what goes where is decided by someone, and that someone should be aware of what is where around the port (at least in theory, this was obviously not the case here). That person screwed up, likely by not paying attention.

TBH, even without that, those silos are pretty conspicuous. That building that remained standing next to the crater (they're built though exactly because AN can explode) was such a silo, and I'm pretty sure that's where the main explosion orignated. Fireworks should not have been put into storage next to them at any time. Even if the silo is empty now, who says a ship full of the stuff won't arrive the next day? 

[Kerbart]

1 hour ago, Dragon01 said:

They definitely should have been, though. Ammonium nitrate is well known to be dangerous. And the port would have multiple storage areas, would it have been so hard to pick one that's not next to a fertilizer silo? I'm pretty sure that when a ship is unloading, they don't just pick a warehouse at random and offload stuff into it, what goes where is decided by someone, and that someone should be aware of what is where around the port (at least in theory, this was obviously not the case here). That person screwed up, likely by not paying attention.

You’d have to mix the AN wIth the fertilizer to make it more potent. Warehouses are nit “picked at random,” they are picked for capacity and for ability.

In this case, dangerous cargo that is unloaded for a ship and—at the time, was supposed to be loaded onto that ship once the fines were paid and the ship was released. But that never happened.

If you’re going to store a large amount of AN with the intention of loading it back into a ship, then it makes sense to store it on the waterfront, and not to truck it back and forth through a densily populated city.

Then the owner of the vessel abandons it. So there’s 2700 tons of AN without an owner. What do you do with it? Sell it to the first buyer that shows up? In Lebanon? I have a feeling that finding a safer spot to store it wasn’t the main issue, but transporting it was. Who’s picking up the tab for that? With hindsight that would have been the cheaper option, but for the past six years it obviously wasn’t.

The head of the port authority and the head of customs tried multiple times to get it removed, but couldn’t get a court order for it. Which suggests to me that others argued against it (probably grounded in “I don’t want it to be my problem”). And that worked out “well” for six years. Until it didn’t.

Finally, “who is so stupid to store fireworks right next to a warehouse full of AN?” Do you know what is stored in each warehouse you pass by? The fireworks owner was probably unaware of the AN.

[Guest]

38 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Finally, “who is so stupid to store fireworks right next to a warehouse full of AN?” Do you know what is stored in each warehouse you pass by? The fireworks owner was probably unaware of the AN.

It's not the owner who decides, it's port authority, who really should know these things. That's their job, after all. Keeping track of what is stored where, and making sure kaboom-inducing things are not stored next to each other, is what their job is about. They are there to ensure the safety of the port, and what was going on in there was not very safe, to say the least.

The problem was not that they couldn't get rid of old fertilizer. Well, it was a problem, but not the root cause of the disaster. The problem was that someone allowed explosives to be stored next to an AN storage, and that nobody moved them elsewhere while welding was being done. It would have cost money (which is why it wasn't done, I suspect), but not doing that is going to cost a lot more. 

EDIT: Also, apparently the big building in question was actually a grain silo (guess I misjudged the scale on those images), with the fertilizer storage right next to it. So, they put fireworks, AN and their reserves of grain right next to each other. Latter two, I can sort of understand (both of them being agricultural goods), but who thought it was a good idea to put fireworks over there? Even without AN, grain burns very nicely, and grain dust is a serious explosion hazard, as well. They should have been very careful putting any more flammable stuff in there.

38 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

You’d have to mix the AN wIth the fertilizer to make it more potent. 

FYI, AN is fertilizer. I used the words interchangeably, that's why there was so much of it in there in first place. It's why most big explosions involved it, it's used so much in agriculture that large quantities are routinely handled and stored. Its use in actual explosives is really minor.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Guest

[Kerbart]

19 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

It's not the owner who decides, it's port authority, who really should know these things. That's their job, after all. Keeping track of what is stored where, and making sure kaboom-inducing things are not stored next to each other, is what their job is about. They are there to ensure the safety of the port, and what was going on in there was not very safe, to say the least.
 

port authority handles that by permits. No port authority knows what is in what warehouse. They can hand out permits for certain class goods, so they know where the hazmat stuff is. In general, port authorities don’t decide where the freight goes; that’s up to the owner of the cargo who has a contract with local warehousing or storage.

19 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

The problem was not that they couldn't get rid of old fertilizer. Well, it was a problem, but not the root cause of the disaster. The problem was that someone allowed explosives to be stored next to an AN silo, and that nobody moved them elsewhere while welding was being done. It would have cost money (which is why it wasn't done, I suspect), but not doing that is going to cost a lot more. 
 

Storage for these kind of things probably has a lot of specific requirements regarding spacing, building strength, etc. That’s probably why the AN ended up where it was stored in the first place, and why the fireworks were stored there as well. Note that this was not the main port of Beirut. Those grain silos? Grain tends to explode as well if it’s not properly handled by an elevator. (“But what if the neighboring warehouse explodes?” “If it reaches us we have other things to worry about”)

19 minutes ago, Dragon01 said:

FIY, AN is fertilizer. I used the words interchangeably, that's why there was so much of it in the silo in first place. It's why most big explosions involved it, it's used so much in agriculture that large quantities are routinely handled and stored. Its use in actual explosives is really minor compared to agriculture.

there was none of it in the silo, that’s why you confused me. It was in the warehouse between the silos and the water. If it were in the silos they wouldn’t be standing there.

[magnemoe]

34 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

port authority handles that by permits. No port authority knows what is in what warehouse. They can hand out permits for certain class goods, so they know where the hazmat stuff is. In general, port authorities don’t decide where the freight goes; that’s up to the owner of the cargo who has a contract with local warehousing or storage.

Storage for these kind of things probably has a lot of specific requirements regarding spacing, building strength, etc. That’s probably why the AN ended up where it was stored in the first place, and why the fireworks were stored there as well. Note that this was not the main port of Beirut. Those grain silos? Grain tends to explode as well if it’s not properly handled by an elevator. (“But what if the neighboring warehouse explodes?” “If it reaches us we have other things to worry about”)

Yes the firework was also explosives, but it broke the don't store detonators and high explosives together rule on an much larger scale. 
Yes nobody probably thought of it then but firework are easy to set off but are rarely an extreme explosive danger unless you store many tons of it. AN is hard to set off but it was thousands of ton of it. 

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

port authority handles that by permits. No port authority knows what is in what warehouse. They can hand out permits for certain class goods, so they know where the hazmat stuff is. In general, port authorities don’t decide where the freight goes; that’s up to the owner of the cargo who has a contract with local warehousing or storage.

Fireworks are "hazmat stuff". Specifically, a serious fire and explosion hazard. After all, they're basically gunpowder packed in cardboard tubes. Professional fireworks can be downright terrifying up close, and even consumer ones contain primary explosives, and a whole lot of them by weight. The authorities don't know exactly what each warehouse contains, but they do know what kind of goods are allowed in. Of course, see below for how a distinction that doesn't seem all that important to some paper pusher might cause mushroom cloud-inducing blunders.

51 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Yes the firework was also explosives, but it broke the don't store detonators and high explosives together rule on an much larger scale. 

My point exactly, and they should not have permitted it. Of course, maybe the permit system is broken, and fireworks fall under the same category as some things that can reasonably be stored next to a pile of a secondary explosive, but the fact is, they are a primary explosive and serious hazard in case of a fire. Now, I'm not completely discounting a case where they fall into the same permit category (hey, they are both explosive materials, that warehouse by the silo is cleared for those!). Either way, somebody, somewhere, didn't think that through.

Then there's a separate issue of welding inside a warehouse cleared to contain explosives, without making sure that whatever is currently there is safe around a welding torch.

1 hour ago, Kerbart said:

there was none of it in the silo, that’s why you confused me. It was in the warehouse between the silos and the water. If it were in the silos they wouldn’t be standing there.

I misjudged the scale on the picture I saw (there wasn't really anything else left standing to provide reference...). AN can indeed stored in strongly-built silos, and it's not inconceivable it'd blow out a outside-facing wall like that (same mechanism as blowout panels on armored vehicles), but that building in the picture was a one of those gargantuan grain silos, far larger than any fertilizer storage.

[Arugela]

6 hours ago, KerikBalm said:

I agree, initial reports were talking about stored fireworks, and the numerous flahses support this.

 

Well, according to what I read (if I remember correctly), its kind of ironic.

Someone saw the appalling conditions in which this was store, there was a report citing several issues: the report cited short term issues and long term issues.

In the long term, they needed to get rid of the stuff. In the short term the report said that there was poor security, and some door didn't even close properly/there was an opening in the warehouse.

So the lebanese government was at least addressing the short term issue, and ordered that the door be fixed to increase security in the short term, and the welding was related to fixing the warehouse.

I wish I can recall where I read that, I'd cite it... but it seems that they were aware of the issue, and were actually taking a first step to address it, when they caused the explosion.

If that is the case maybe they should have left them to their normal messy ways. That is a real world way of dealing with things. They live in an area where that is common from heat and other realities. It's completely viable and fits normal experience. It's not always good to force things that are normal in one environment to another. Too many subtle details. People do things for a reason. Even if they don't know why(which they probably do there.). The longer we are in one place the more highly adapted we become.

Speaking of which, I wonder if there are any animals or bugs that could have been used in the environment to destroy the stuff long ago for basically free. As long as it doesn't produce highly explosive ants or something.

That or the fact they are in a desert, maybe they could take a policy of selling it for actual fertilizer use. Could have solved the money problems. Or is that usable in the environment. Not sure how farming works there. If there are other dangers may be pre mix it in dirt or something and make it inert somehow. Compost maybe? Whatever actually works.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Arugela

[sevenperforce]

7 hours ago, Dragon01 said:

They definitely should have been, though. Ammonium nitrate is well known to be dangerous. And the port would have multiple storage areas, would it have been so hard to pick one that's not next to a fertilizer silo? I'm pretty sure that when a ship is unloading, they don't just pick a warehouse at random and offload stuff into it, what goes where is decided by someone, and that someone should be aware of what is where around the port (at least in theory, this was obviously not the case here). That person screwed up, likely by not paying attention.

TBH, even without that, those silos are pretty conspicuous. That building that remained standing next to the crater (they're built though exactly because AN can explode) was such a silo, and I'm pretty sure that's where the main explosion orignated. Fireworks should not have been put into storage next to them at any time. Even if the silo is empty now, who says a ship full of the stuff won't arrive the next day? 

Those silos stored grain, not fertilizer. I believe they were also Lebanon's main grain storage facility which also sucks for the country right now.

It is not clear whether the fireworks were stored in the same warehouse as the AN or an adjacent one. The AN was not in silos at all but was in one of the low warehouses. Don't know if it was in barrels or what.

5 hours ago, Kerbart said:

You’d have to mix the AN wIth the fertilizer to make it more potent. Warehouses are nit “picked at random,” they are picked for capacity and for ability.

This was already touched on, but the AN is the fertilizer. You have to mix it with hydrocarbons to make it more like TNT or semtex. Mixing with fuel oil gets it up to around 70% TNT equivalent. The correct proportion of diesel (which is I believe what these types of ships use) can get it up to 78%; that's what McVeigh used in the OK bombing.

Because of the way it went up, my money is on the entire warehouse catching on fire until the ambient temperature reached autoignition for the AN/ANFO mix. I doubt it was a primary-secondary at all. That is what happened with the Texas City disaster -- the AN in the hold of the Grandcamp was exothermically decomposing until heat and pressure reached a certain level, and then the whole thing went off at once.

Edited August 6, 2020 by sevenperforce

[mikegarrison]

19 minutes ago, sevenperforce said:

This was already touched on, but the AN is the fertilizer. You have to mix it with hydrocarbons to make it more like TNT or semtex. Mixing with fuel oil gets it up to around 70% TNT equivalent. The correct proportion of diesel (which is I believe what these types of ships use) can get it up to 78%; that's what McVeigh used in the OK bombing.

Actually, no. McVeigh used ANNM (ammonium nitrate plus nitro-methane), which is more powerful than ANFO (ammonium nitrate plus fuel oil).

I've used ANFO personally, to blow stumps. (Well, I was a teenager. I did help, and at least one time did press the trigger for the explosion, but we had a friend with an explosives license who supervised the whole thing.)

Also, most ships use "bunker fuel", which is basically the sludge left over after more valuable hydrocarbons are cracked from the oil.

Edited August 6, 2020 by mikegarrison

[sevenperforce]

2 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Actually, no. McVeigh used ANNM (ammonium nitrate plus nitro-methane), which is more powerful than ANFO (ammonium nitrate plus fuel oil).

He used both ANNM and AN+diesel; I was referring to the latter above. 70% of his bomb was ANNM; 30% was AN+diesel.