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We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

The willow is too close to the house.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Militantly superior in their own minds…

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Not all heroes wear capes.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

I really should read my own blog.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

All your base are belong to Tunch.

It was, in fact, named Jelly.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Enormous Explosion In Port Of Beirut, Lebanon

Enormous Explosion In Port Of Beirut, Lebanon

by | 133 Comments

This post is in: ,

Here’s the best information I have as to the cause.

The port is pretty much destroyed.

There are several clear videos of what happened. A fire led to a very damaging explosion.

The red cloud is NO2, the product of a nitrate explosion. The smooth white cloud that rapidly expands is water condensing in the shock wave.

It is NOT a nuclear explosion.

 

Update: Bellingcat has a very good overview.

Open thread!

 

Reader Interactions

133Comments

  1. 1.

    Adam L Silverman

    The Guardian is reporting:

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/aug/04/beirut-explosion-huge-blast-port-lebanon-capital

    13:26

    Rumble of Beirut explosion felt in Cyprus

    That is 234 km (145 miles) away.

    My colleague Michael Safi just spoke to a resident there in the city of Larnaca.

    “Everyone in Cyprus felt it,” said the person, who asked to be referred to only by his first name, George. “The door was shaking in my house. In Larnaca, they heard it and felt it … It was so loud we thought it happened here. My house was shaking.”

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    I’ve emailed one of my former students who is a general in the Lebanese Army if/when I hear back and there’s any new information, I’ll update.

  3. 3.

    Mart

    That is impressive. Kind of a giant West Texas fertilizer explosion. Way too much boom boom in one place.

  4. 4.

    mesmer a la carte

    Hello all, my brother is a correspondent in Beirut and initial reports are that this was a targeted attack on a Hezbollah munitions depot disguised in the port. I’ll update as I get more information.

  5. 5.

    Gravenstone

    Someone down the page mentioned Texas City. Now we’re learning a significant mass of ammonium nitrate was present. History has the most twisted sense of “humor” sometimes. Just tragic.

  8. 8.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    God that last clip in the first tweet is scary and impressive all at the same time. You could see the shock wave racing across the water towards the camera. I feel so sorry for the people who were nearby and on site. Is it known how long the fire had been burning? God, imagine being a firefighter down there when the secondary explosion happened….

  9. 9.

    Martin

    The clue is in the color of that smoke, and IIRC sodium nitrate doesn’t produce red smoke. But there was an initial fire and then an explosion, so clearly there were two flammable things there.

  10. 10.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mart: I’m pretty sure that the all but failed state of Lebanon has better storage regulations for hazardous materials than Texas.

  13. 13.

    JPL

    I hope it was not targeted because the collateral damage is large. Hundreds are dead or wounded.

  16. 16.

    Mary G

    Terrible. Whatever exploded however it did, it’s a calamity. That third clip, where the person filming is so far away and still gets knocked down, is horrifying. Too bad we don’t have a president to express our condolences and support to the Lebanese people.

  17. 17.

    Kent

    I was living in Waco TX when the West TX nitrate fertilizer explosion happened about…6 years ago, or whenever it was.  We could feel it at our house 25 miles away.   About a week later I drove through the blast zone out of curiosity.  Everything was flattened down to the concrete slab foundations for blocks around.    We had some West HS students temporarily attending classes at our school for the remainder of the school year because their school literally vanished.

    Nitrates are not to be fucked with.

  19. 19.

    Kent

    @Adam L Silverman:@Mart: I’m pretty sure that the all but failed state of Lebanon has better storage regulations for hazardous materials than Texas.

    Texas had regulations too.  They just didn’t enforce them because “starve government and drown it in a bathtub.”  No reason to repeal actual regulations when you can just ignore them and get away with it.

  20. 20.

    Cheryl Rofer

    It looks like there will be many casualties.

    People may have been standing at windows, watching the fire, and then the blast shattered the windows and cut them, in addition to the nearby casualties.

  21. 21.

    Mart

    @Adam L Silverman: ResponsibleAg.com tried to get the fertilizer industry to follow OSHA /NFPA rules in place decades before the Texas explosion. Mostly simple stupid stuff like no more than x tons in this bunker, or don’t store this next to that. Took them awhile to get going after the explosion, so lost immediacy. But as of five years ago they were making progress.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    The Israelis have both officially and unofficially denied any involvement.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/aug/04/beirut-explosion-huge-blast-port-lebanon-capital

    18:46

    Israeli officials have denied involvement in the Beirut port explosion.

    “Israel has nothing to do with the incident,” the official said on condition of anonymity, according to Reuters.

    The country’s foreign minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, told Israeli N12 television news that the explosion was most likely an accident caused by a fire.

    Tensions have been high this week following a cross-border confrontation between Israel and the Lebanese militant group, Hezbollah.

    Here’s our story from last week:

  26. 26.

    MomSense

    I sent an email to my friends who are at American University.  I hope they are ok.  Not sure how far away from the blast site they are.

  27. 27.

    Kent

    From Cheryl’s origional post.  Reports are it was a depot storing sodium nitrate.  For what it’s worth.  From Wikipedia:

    Sodium nitrate is a white solid very soluble in water. It is a readily available source of the nitrate anion (NO3−), which is useful in several reactions carried out on industrial scales for the production of fertilizers, pyrotechnics and smoke bombs, glass and pottery enamels, food preservatives (esp. meats), and solid rocket propellant. It has been mined extensively for these purposes.

    Emphasis mine.   Isn’t Hezbollah very big into rocket production for attacks on Israel?

  28. 28.

    trollhattan

    @Kent:

    Thank god it didn’t occur when school was in session.

    My employer at the time lost eight(?) employees at Texas City when the BP refinery had a huge explosion. It was wholly due to BP’s shabby safety practices and the lack of oversight, as determined by that commie James Baker. BP, of course, would go on to bigger and better explosions in that general area.

    My employer got dinged for where they sited the job shack they used for an unrelated project at that refinery.

  29. 29.

    Gravenstone

    @trollhattan: Nitrogen oxides, predominantly dioxide (NO2, as noted in the OP). Decomposition product of ammonium nitrate. Of course, it could also indicate the detonation of an ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil) charge.

  30. 30.

    Elizabelle

    Poor Beirut.

    I hope that stronger regulations for storing explosive materials follow from this.

    Texas:  learn up.  I wish they could have a better governor and legislature.

  31. 31.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Kent: Yes and Israel smacked them last week. Which is why they were quick with the official and unofficial denials about 15 minutes ago.

  32. 32.

    Cermet

    That country has suffered so terribly for so long and now this – life sucks and then it gets worse. so terribly sad and most likely screw ups led to this preventable carnage.

  34. 34.

    rp

    Are there really people who thought that was a nuke? As terrible as this explosion was, I doubt it compares to even the smallest atomic bomb or nuke.

  35. 35.

    mesmer a la carte

    From my brother’s newspaper, El Anahar English:

    https://en.annahar.com/article/1249673-massive-explosion-at-the-beirut-port-shakes-beirut

    Mokhtar Abed Harakeh from Borj Barajneh was playing chess in the mountainous area of Kaifoun when he heard an Israeli warplane. “We heard a very loud sound that was followed with 2 explosions,” He told Annahar.

    Lebanon has made an official complaint to UNIFIL about Israeli military overflight of Lebanese/Syrian border increased along with the upcoming date of the Rafiq Hariri trial on Friday, 7 June.

  36. 36.

    Martin

    @JPL: I doubt it. There are people filming from balconies with glass railings quite close by. Cars seem to be still moving on the road very close by.

    Yes, fatalities, but the grain silos are still standing, traffic still moving no more than a few hundred meters away. Possibly a lot of injured from flying debris/glass, concussive injuries from the blast, but I don’t think this will be as bad as it first appeared.

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    What a news day.  Fast moving hurricane/tropical storm along the populated East Coast USA.  Trump’s shambolic interview with Axios.  The usual coronavirus death toll and mis-response.  In the background.

    And worse, this disaster at Beirut’s port.

    And it is just barely 2 pm Eastern.

  38. 38.

    Roger Moore

    @Mart:

    all those people nearby are dead. Expect for several miles of the blast wave.

    No way did the blast wave kill many people that far away.  People survived within 1 km of ground zero in Hiroshima, and this is a much smaller explosion than that.  Explosions are better at destroying structures than killing people, so anywhere the buildings are still standing the people are probably OK unless they were hit by flying glass or something similar.  There are almost certainly people who need rescuing in some of the buildings that were destroyed; that’s true in almost any big explosion.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    @Cheryl Rofer: 

    So I guess it’s good that so many are in masks these days, due to COVID. Although who knows how much protection those offer against chemicals.

    PS: Commenter name/email disappearing.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    About one of the Twitter comments

    This isn’t that complicated, people. There is a fire and a secondary explosion. There are literally none of the phenomena one sees with a nuclear explosion.

    Yeah. It’s not a nuclear explosion. But it’s also not like the average person sees an explosion every freaking day.

    And this Jeffrey Lewis person didn’t provide any useful information.

    Hate crap like this.

  45. 45.

    The Moar You Know

    Head of General Security says the blast was caused by a fire in a depot of highly explosive material, including Sodium nitrate

    Not sodium nitrate. That Red/brown smoke comes from one thing only that I know of: nitrogen tetroxide. Hypergolic rocket propellant. Somebody had a nice big stash of rockets in that port

     

    Oh yeah, could be NO2 as Cheryl notes.  Also used for the same thing.  Shouldn’t be keeping that shit in a warehouse in a populated area.

  48. 48.

    Martin

    @Kent: Sodium nitrate is used in all kinds of stuff. Doubt they have a rocket factory in literally the first warehouse at the port.

    @Gravenstone: We really shouldn’t get ahead ourselves on this. The Texas City disaster was an ANFO explosion, albeit an unintentional one. Ammonium nitrate is such a commonly used chemical (fertilizer) and it was on a ship that was loaded with bunker oil, so when it caught fire it was just a matter of time before the two combined and exploded.

    Ports are always places where dangerous chemicals are stored, as well as lots of petrochemicals including fuel oil. Plus, they are places where things are moved in bulk, and are expected to be moved quickly and inexpensively. Unfortunately, ports blow up all the time. Tianjin in 2015.

  51. 51.

    Roger Moore

    @Gravenstone:

    Of course, it could also indicate the detonation of an ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil) charge.

    I would not expect to see a lot of NO2 from ANFO.  Straight nitrates have lots of excess oxygen, so they tend to produce oxides of nitrogen as a decomposition product when they explode.  The purpose of the fuel oil in ANFO is to soak up that excess oxygen and use it to produce a bigger, cheaper blast.  That means there are a lot fewer left over nitrogen oxides in something like ANFO.

  52. 52.

    Gravenstone

    @Martin: Oh I know, just pointing out that ammonium nitrate could be present for nefarious, as well as innocuous reasons.

  54. 54.

    Mary G

    More information is needed, so please don't speculate on the situation in Beirut. You don't know what happened. I don't know what happened. All we know is that people are hurting.— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) August 4, 2020

  55. 55.

    Booger

    @Martin: The nitrate in the Texas City explosion had been prilled, then coated with parrafin wax to keep it from absorbing atmospheric moisture and clumping. So from the get go it was practically a perfectly mixed ANFO bomb. Once it began spontaneously heating, it was too late to do anything.

  56. 56.

    Martin

    @Cheryl Rofer: Yeah, the secondary fires are a real problem at ports.

    One of the things the US sometimes gets right is putting factories out in the middle of nowhere, which we can do because we have a lot of nowhere. PEPCON wasn’t too devastating for this reason. But Texas would build that shit in the middle of a city because fuck fire codes. But the whole point of ports is to serve as a collection point, so lets put our ammonium perchlorate next to some hydrazine next to some potassium sulfate next to a fuckton of oil.

  57. 57.

    mesmer a la carte

    @Adam L Silverman: Hey Adam, I’m not a crank and in fact am big fan of yours.

    Here’s the link: https://en.annahar.com

    Nor am I anti-israel or pro Hezbollah.  I’ve spent a lot of time in Lebanon and am sympathetic to their people who have been manipulated by outside forces for too long.

  59. 59.

    Brachiator

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    Google Jeffrey Lewis. Nukes are part of his expertise.

    Condescension also appears to be part of his expertise.

    Even if he was putting out Twitter comments to other weapons experts, his message here was pointless and non- informative.

  60. 60.

    Martin

    @Gravenstone: I’m just suggesting that any suggestions of terrorism/evidence of terrorist activities is really unlikely.

    The sheer tonnage of dangerous chemicals that are used to get food to your table and all that is massive, and unless you’re a nation like the US that produces most of that in-house, you’re funneling it all through a handful of ports (one in the case of Lebanon). So literally everything a nation needs sits in that port, at quantity, at one time or another. The amount of this stuff we use for growing crops or making glass or whatever is orders of magnitude more than what anyone is using to build rockets.

    By all accounts Tianjin was a much larger disaster, as was Texas City, Halifax, and any number of others, and none of those involved weapons factories or any other illegal or unsanctioned activity. You move a lot of chemicals for perfectly normal reasons and eventually they’re going to go boom. The better your practices the less likely they’ll go boom, but that’s never zero.

  61. 61.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Brachiator: A simple statement that it wasn’t a nuke from an expert on Twitter.  I don’t think he need to give more data at first.

  63. 63.

    Martin

    I’ll also add the complicating effect of sanctions and such to port operations. Iran has relatively poor petroleum refining operations, mostly due to sanctions (some of which are bullshit – banning elements that are key to refinery production on the assertion they could also be used to build nukes in order to keep them in their economic box). So they need to export their oil and then re-import the refined product. That means that a product that could have been made in the country using road or rail or pipeline transport instead needs to get piled up at a port, loaded onto a ship, unloaded from a ship and then piled up at the port again. That’s a lot of extra handling, and therefore opportunity for disaster that would have been avoided if they could do the operation within their borders.

    Sometimes that’s deliberate, and sometimes it’s just externalizing a cost. If my company isn’t on the line for the damages caused by that catastrophe, then what do I care if I make a decision that creates a hazard for the population of Houston?

  64. 64.

    Elizabelle

    @Martin:   I particularly loved that in West, Texas, the fertilizer plant was next to an elementary school and nursing home/elderly facility. Wasn’t it?

    Zoning could take care of that.  But.  Texas.

    From Wiki re West, Texas explosion.   Also report that in 2016, the ATF declared fire had been deliberately set.  Checking that now.

    In addition to the obliterated plant, the damaged buildings included the public West Middle School, which sits next to the facility.[27] A neighboring 50-unit, two-story apartment building was destroyed.[6]

    The blast damaged the nearby West Rest Haven nursing home, and many residents were evacuated. Many of the nursing home residents received cuts from flying glass, but emergency personnel on scene judged that most of these injuries were not life-threatening.[28]

  65. 65.

    Ken

    John Clark’s Ignition may be of interest to some. It has very readable (and often quite funny) descriptions of nitrate chemistry and rocket fuels, among many other things.

  66. 66.

    Doug R

    @trollhattan:

     

    My employer at the time lost eight(?) employees at Texas City when the BP refinery had a huge explosion. It was wholly due to BP’s shabby safety practices and the lack of oversight, as determined by that commie James Baker. BP, of course, would go on to bigger and better explosions in that general area.

    BP also had that massive leak in the Gulf of Mexico and years earlier when the Exxon Valdez ran aground they were the company responsible for cleanup. They did such a shitty job that Exxon fired them and hired their own crews.

  67. 67.

    Elizabelle

    More on West, Texas explosion.  Jebus.  Yeehaw.

    According to the company’s insurer, United States Fire Insurance of Morristown, New Jersey, the facility was only covered by $1 million in liability insurance. According to official estimates from both state and company officials, this amount did not even begin to cover the cost of damages. Furthermore, according to The Dallas Morning News, Texas law allows fertilizer storage facilities to operate without any liability insurance at all, even when they store hazardous materials.[30]

  68. 68.

    Elizabelle

    @Mary G:   From another thread:  re the Orange County Register:  I have a subscription, through Christmas time, because they were giving away a multimonth trial for $2.00.

    Contact me via a front pager, if you would like.  I will see if I can share the sub or give you login info.

  69. 69.

    WaterGirl

    @mesmer a la carte: I googled and couldn’t find that.  Do you have a date for that article?  If so, would you mind if I add the article date to your comment so it’s clear that’s not in reference to the explosion today?

  70. 70.

    Martin

    @JR: I don’t think so. The sheer tonnage of shit that went wrong at Bhopal is fairly unique. At the very least, port disasters have about a 50/50 chance of blowing any dangerous chemicals out to water and away from people.

    The Union Carbide plant in Bhopal was smack in the middle of a populated area. We knew it was full of chemicals that would stick close to the ground and be fatal. And you had a failure to warn the public there as well.

    We don’t know that there are any such chemicals in play here, and one big benefit of an explosion is that it gets everyone to pay very close attention with the default behavior to move away. There was no explosion in Bhopal – nothing to warn the public.

  71. 71.

    mesmer a la carte

    @WaterGirl: Here’s the link:

    https://en.annahar.com/article/1249673-massive-explosion-at-the-beirut-port-shakes-beirut

    Sorry for the confusion.  I condensed the article so it appeared that the reference was to June 7 when the quote re the war plane was from today.

    Also, long time fan of you as well.  I mainly lurk but rely on BJ for information not available anywhere else.

    My brother is a third generation journalist who absconded to Beirut several years ago from DC.  He’s on the ground in Beirut at the moment managing a staff of young reporters.  The photo in the article is his newsroom post blast.

  72. 72.

    Brachiator

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    “This isn’t that complicated, people” is condescension, not a simple statement.

    Clarity from experts is appreciated. Lewis did not provide clarity.

    Even commenters here are making incorrect assertions about the explosion. Confusion and inaccuracies are easy, even among people who are thoughtful.

    I had seen the explosion in a previous thread. I did not jump to the conclusion that nukes were involved, but I had not seen an explosion of that magnitude that was not in footage from a war zone. It was shocking and disturbing.

  73. 73.

    Martin

    @Elizabelle: The flipside of zoning is San Francisco where the poverty line is now around $90K/yr. because even liberals tell minorities and poor people to fuck off when a million+ in home equity is on the line.

    But yeah, there’s so much open land in the US – especially places like Texas, that regulating that these things out in the weeds with a certain perimeter shouldn’t be especially hard.

  74. 74.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    But yeah, there’s so much open land in the US – especially places like Texas, that regulating that these things out in the weeds with a certain perimeter shouldn’t be especially hard.

    Ports and areas convenient to transportation hubs are not always easy to obtain.

  75. 75.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Martin: The Union Carbide plant at Bhopal had a large exclusion zone scheduled around it, at least to start with as it was recognised to be dangerous if something went wrong there. Unfortunately the workforce having well-paid jobs and casual labour employed in and around the plant led to a shanty town being built all the way up to the plant’s fences, contrary to regulations but the authorities turned a blind eye to this and made no attempt to clear the danger zone of people who had nowhere else to live.

  77. 77.

    WaterGirl

    @mesmer a la carte:

    I added the link to your original comment.  The article is a bit confusing – with a close reading, it appears that they are adding that as a point of reference to the complaint from June as a point of information.  But the article didn’t make that clear.

    I suppose a lot of things written in the heat of the moment are less clear than would be desired.

  78. 78.

    Calouste

    @Elizabelle: In the case of the West, Texas explosion, $1 million would barely cover the costs of determining the costs (i.e. the claims adjusters).

  81. 81.

    Geminid

    I have seen recent stories describing how Lebanon was moving from prolonged economic, social and political stress into total collapse. And now this explosion, on top of the pandemic. Those poor people are really suffering.

  82. 82.

    Roger Moore

    @Brachiator:

    Ports and areas convenient to transportation hubs are not always easy to obtain.

    And sometimes it improves safety to put stuff close to the port to minimize the danger of transporting it.  It’s not obvious, for instance, that it’s safer to have an oil pipeline running from the port to a refinery well outside of town than it is to have the refinery right next to the oil storage area in the port.

  83. 83.

    Martin

    @Brachiator: It’s a pretty typical industrial explosion. Dramatic looking, sure. Getting industrial accidents on video has until recently been rare.

    PEPCON is among the largest caught on video pre-cellphone. You have the Soviet N1 explosion as well. More recently Tianjin, and the Cosmo refinery explosion – where a number of very large propane storage tanks exploded. That was mostly overlooked because relative to the tsunami and nuclear accident that also occurred, it was pretty minor news. The West explosion was pretty similar. Lacked the shock collar, though.

  84. 84.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: There was a very popular tweet going around that just went “mushroom cloud = this was nuclear”. I don’t blame the guy for being irritated (and it’s not a good idea to prominently link to misinformation when you’re debunking it, so he couldn’t easily provide context).

  85. 85.

    Martin

    @Brachiator: No, that’s entirely fair. But the West plant? Shit, that could have been anywhere. And if you build a port/refinery, you don’t need to allow people to build housing up against it, which is really the larger problem – people building toward the dangerous thing, not that we put the dangerous thing near people.

  86. 86.

    MomSense

    @mrmoshpotato:

    That seems very very close.  Normally they are in Maine in the summers and we sit outside drinking wine, eating delicious food, and talking.  Covid prevented them from traveling this summer.

  87. 87.

    Danielx

    Holy shit.

    I saw a video on YouTube of an ammunition ship blowing up after being hit by a kamikaze plane, but that’s the only conventional explosion I’ve seen that comes close.

  88. 88.

    Roger Moore

    @Martin:

    And if you build a port/refinery, you don’t need to allow people to build housing up against it, which is really the larger problem – people building toward the dangerous thing, not that we put the dangerous thing near people.

    That’s great for factories that work on dangerous stuff- though they still need to be close enough to population centers that they can have a convenient workforce- but it doesn’t work so well for ports.  Just try to name a great natural location for a port that doesn’t already have a major city located there.  And big cities tend to have the kind of very expensive land that forces people to pack stuff in exactly the way you’re saying is a bad idea.

  89. 89.

    Aleta

    My Lebanese friend, a percussionist, is in LA doing studio work, his children with him, but his parents, sister, friends are in Beirut, no word about them yet.

  90. 90.

    Martin

    CNN reporting at least 25 killed, 2500+ injured. Hopefully most injuries are minor/non-life threatening. Looks like a LOT of flying glass.

  91. 91.

    Martin

    @Roger Moore: All you need is a half mile exclusion zone. The plant doesn’t need to own that land, the city simply needs to not make it available for development. The extra half mile doesn’t affect anyone’s commute.

  93. 93.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Martin: and the Cosmo refinery explosion – where a number of very large propane storage tanks exploded.

    That was in Chiba in eastern Tokyo, wasn’t it? Tokyo Bay is lined with port facilities and the eastern side of the bay is one of the prime fossil-fuel ports for the entire Kanto area.

  94. 94.

    Adam L Silverman

    @mesmer a la carte: I did not mean any offense, just wanted a link because I couldn’t find exactly what you were referring to. Which is why I appreciate the link. Thank you for providing it.

    I hope your brother is safe there on the ground.

  99. 99.

    Brachiator

    @Roger Moore:

    RE: Ports and areas convenient to transportation hubs are not always easy to obtain.

    And sometimes it improves safety to put stuff close to the port to minimize the danger of transporting it.  It’s not obvious, for instance, that it’s safer to have an oil pipeline running from the port to a refinery well outside of town than it is to have the refinery right next to the oil storage area in the port.

    I used to take a Metrolink Train at Norwalk station. The area is very industrial, and I think rail used to be more important. But even today, commuter rail shares tracks with commercial rail, and is often delayed to accommodate freight traffic. Tons and tons of stuff traveling between the port at San Pedro, maybe also Long Beach.

    Also used to work in Torrance, within miles of the big ass refinery.

    There are people who know far more about this, but to a casual observer it is interesting to see how much industrial activity is concentrated into relatively small areas, with an emphasis on transporting goods outward into the city and state.

  101. 101.

    Kattails

    As ever, thank you so much, Cheryl and Adam, for adding your immediate responses and expertise to this. The film from the balcony was horrific. Even though I knew something more was coming I still exclaimed out loud.  There are going to be terrible injuries from this. I hope to God it was “only” a  mistake or accident.

  103. 103.

    mesmer a la carte

    I’ve driven by the port many times. Beirut is a very ‘dense’ city, meaning few open spaces.  Plus it’s situated on a hillside so the intense blast went upwards and out which accounts for the large area of physical damage.  It’s an interesting city on many levels, not the least of which is an extreme wealth gap.  Just across the road from the port are 5 star hotels and high end retail shops and car dealerships, including Armani and Bentley.  Immediately surrounding that area is a nightclub and bar district and then  poorly built housing blocks.  Lot’s of competing outside interests there, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Syria and to a lesser extent the US.

  105. 105.

    Brachiator

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    “Even commenters here” and “people who are thoughtful.” Are you sure you are at the right place?

    Yep. And I also include you in the “thoughtful” category.

  106. 106.

    A Ghost to Most

    I wondered about the reddish smoke. Thanks to the chemists for the lesson in nitrate explosions. I stick to black powder, which has a bluish-white smoke.

  109. 109.

    Mike in NC

    My wife’s cousin retired from the State Department after a tour as Ambassador to Lebanon. Lives in Beirut. He spent pretty much his entire career in the Middle East and loved it. His health is declining and we might see him move back to DC in the near future.

  110. 110.

    Ruckus

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    He was making a statement of a fact that he has/should have direct knowledge of, without speculation about anything else because that’s what a lot of people do, speculate, which almost always makes an emergent situation worse.

  111. 111.

    Brachiator

    @Matt McIrvin:

    There was a very popular tweet going around that just went “mushroom cloud = this was nuclear”.

    Never saw it. Don’t know anything about it. And I try to filter out obvious nonsense, much of which originates on Twitter.

    I don’t blame the guy for being irritated

    I am old school on this. I don’t give two shits about whether the guy was irritated. If you are an expert, I expect you to bring clarity.

    Here in Los Angeles, I have watched even seasoned reporters ask Dr Lucy Jones dumbass questions about earthquakes whenever we have a significant rattle. And she is always patient with people who are clearly fools.  She has been doing this for years, and if anyone has a “right” to be irritated, it would be her.

    But she is a professional who realizes that it is important to convey the most accurate information possible about earthquakes. And as a result she is an almost beloved resource. It ain’t a quake until she has weighed in on it.

    And people who pay attention, especially when she effortlessly edits a dumb question and uses it to convey essential information, often come away enlightened.

    Another more recent example is British stats man Sir David John Spiegelhalter, who recently answered questions about CoronaVirus risk on a BBC News program.  His patience was being tested by a reporter who clearly believed, incorrectly, that he had a good grasp of the math related to the pandemic.

  112. 112.

    mesmer a la carte

    Latest intel confirms that it was ammonium nitrate stored in a port warehouse.  No clue yet whether the explosion was an accident or something nefarious.

  113. 113.

    Ruckus

    @Martin:

    I was a rather active vendor for a devision of Union Carbide when Bhopal happened.  Some of the info I was given differed on some details about it. It was interesting to hear some of the stories from two rather different sides.

  114. 114.

    Brachiator

    @raven:

    My mom lived right by Del Amo Mall.

    I used to walk over to the mall for lunch.

    Fun place.

    It’s been weird to watch malls go from centers of economic activity to obsolete slabs of useless retail space.

  115. 115.

    Roger Moore

    @mesmer a la carte:

    No clue yet whether the explosion was an accident or something nefarious.

    When there was already a big fire burning there, the likely explanation is that the explosion was secondary to the fire.  The big question is whether the fire was accidental or arson.

  116. 116.

    catatonia

    Concussive explosions in the Mideast/Trump’s tight as thieves with our enemies/the megalopolitan wind is on the increase/and COVID do whatever it please/Looks like a lot of threats to world peace/for the envoy.

  118. 118.

    Kattails

    @Adam L Silverman: I know, that’s why I gave her first billing :) But I saw you checking in and fielding a possibly dubious connection.  And I truly do appreciate all the front-pagers, this is my go-to resource. Remarkably sane, given everything….

    Humm, winds picking up here from the storm, something just hit the roof ,probably oak branch.

  120. 120.

    Sam

    Juliette Kayyam  says that the Israelis have identified that area as a disguised Hezbollah bomb production facility, Twitter.  I don’t know how to do links on my phone

  124. 124.

    J R in WV

    @Doug R:

    August 4, 2020 at 3:04 pm

    Vancouver’s Stanley Park has a great view of the sulphur piles stored at the harbour in North Vancouver:

    Back in the early 1970s my Navy ship sailed up the MIssissippi to the Port of New Orleans for an annual honor visit to the widow of the Medal of Honor veteran the ship was named for.

    One of the very many facsinating things we saw on that slow cruise was a factory producing liquid sulfur from deep wells by pumping super-heated steam into the ground. The sulfur was completely liquid, a creamy yellow stream flowing into a tanker moored at a pier, very similar to a petrochemical facility, but for not needing/having distillation stacks.

    There was an aroma, of course, but since it was way off in the delta from any other facilities, no big deal, right?

    Right~!~

  125. 125.

    Burnspbesq

    @mesmer a la carte:

    I saw a tweet saying there was 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate being stored at the port, supposedly in unsafe conditions.

    if you’re scoring at home, that’s well over 1,000 times the amount used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

  131. 131.

    columbusqueen

    As bad as this is, at least it’s not Halifax 1917. Every time I read about that, my blood runs cold at the horror of it all.

  133. 133.

    Kenneth Fair

    It actually looks to me like the initial fire may have involved fireworks. In the video from the balcony, before the massive explosion, you can see flashes and sparks of something cooking off in the fire.

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