"RacinBob" (racinbob)
08/06/2020 at 00:43 • Filed to: None
3
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"RacinBob" (racinbob)
08/06/2020 at 00:43 • Filed to: None | 3
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Per Wiki
!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
> RacinBob
08/06/2020 at 01:11 |
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I used to work in a facility where the ammonium nitrate we had was stored in the “DHS” room. A room with 24/7 surveillance, and required two different keycards to get in. One was for the perimeter barbed wire fence, the other was for the internal cage.
....This was added to some plant supplement powder blends as well as some electro plating solutions. It seemed like such overkill given the chemical was stored among
cyanide bricks and pesticides. But then you explain to people that the town of West, TX, was almost literally wiped off the face of the earth because of an AmNo explosion and it suddenly makes sense.
In chemical terms, AMmonium NItrate likes to decay in high energy (read: Hot) environments to give off oxygen gas and nitrous oxide. If other materials are present, keep in mind that many nitrates can become oxidizers besides just nitrous oxide so it is entirely possible for various families of oxygen compounds to form. That’s bad enough, but the problem then becomes that some of these compounds like to undergo chain reactions where their own creation makes more of themselves and gives off more heat and so on and so forth and it just runs itself into a large explosion.
In simple terms - AMmonium Nitrate is perfectly safe and stable, until it isn’t. Because once it *starts* going off, it doesn’t *stop* going off. ANd in an enclosed building or silo, those flammable and explosive gases combined with the high energy load of the powder mass due to thermal decomposition products or side reactions can mean your warehouse is a crude fuel air bomb.
Dr_Watson
> RacinBob
08/06/2020 at 02:06 |
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If you run some quick math on the Beirut explosion. By weight (not volume) 2750 tonnes of Ammonium Nitrate would fill approximately 30 rail cars or 95 semi trailers.
The OKC federal building was destroyed by a box truck.
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RacinBob
> RacinBob
08/06/2020 at 07:50 |
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Both of your responses are pieces of a puzzle for me. Based on pictures and descriptions this was a warehouse ( guess a 1000' long) with 2700 tonne bags of Ammonium Nitrate. So even if there was a decomposition fire, I would think that the material is so distributed that it would fizzle very hotly instead of explode.
Given the evidence I suppose it did until it got exponentially hotter and went bang. I wonder what percentage of the material actually combusted in the blast. 10%?
gmporschenut also a fan of hondas
> RacinBob
08/06/2020 at 08:41 |
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those giant bags can be stacked.
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RacinBob
> RacinBob
08/06/2020 at 09:10 |
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Yes and it looks like these were stacked. So what is the cause of the shockwave gas explosion? The 10 000 to one gas volume expansion from rapid decomposition? Or is it the released heat caus ing rapid gas expansion? Both?
I am curious if anybody has a handle on the numbers. Obviously it was a huge something to create such a crater as well as destroying a filled bank of grain silos.....
davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
> RacinBob
08/06/2020 at 09:41 |
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The cargo of ammonium nitrate arrived in Lebanon in September 2013, on board a Russian-owned cargo vessel flying a Moldovan Flag. The Rhosus, according to information from the ship-tracking site, Fleetmon, was heading from Georgia to Mozambique.
It was forced to dock in Beirut after facing technical problems at sea, according to lawyers representing the boat’s crew. But Lebanese officials prevented the vessel from sailing, and eventually, it was abandoned by its owners and crew - information partially corroborated by Fleetmon.
The ship’s dangerous cargo was then offloaded and placed in Hangar 12 of Beirut port, a large grey structure facing the country’s main north-south highway at the main entrance to the capital.
Months later, on June 27, 2014, then-director of Lebanese Customs Shafik Merhi sent a letter addressed to an unnamed “Urgent Matters judge”, asking for a solution to the cargo, according to documents shared online.
Customs officials sent at least five more letters over the next three years - on December 5, 2014, May 6, 2015, May 20, 2016, October 13, 2016, and October 27, 2017 - asking for guidance and warning that the material posed a danger, Badri Daher, the current director of Lebanese Customs, told broadcaster LBCI on Wednesday.
They proposed three options: Export the ammonium nitrate, hand it over to the Lebanese Army, or sell it to the privately-owned Lebanese Explosives Company.
One letter sent in 2016 noted there had been “no reply” from judges to previous requests.
It pleaded: “In view of the serious danger of keeping these goods in the hangar in unsuitable climatic conditions, we reaffirm our request to please request the marine agency to re-export these goods immediately to preserve the safety of the port and those working in it, or to look into agreeing to sell this amount” to the Lebanese Explosives Company.
Again, there was no reply.
A year later, Daher, the new Lebanese Customs director, wrote to a judge once again.
In the October 27, 2017, letter, Daher urged the judge to come to a decision on the matter in view of “the danger ... of leaving these goods in the place they are, and to those working there”.
Nearly three years later, the ammonium nitrate was still in the hangar.
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davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
> themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
08/06/2020 at 09:45 |
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“intentional criminal act”
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themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
> davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
08/06/2020 at 09:56 |
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The USCSB’s youtube channel is full of detailed explanations of incidents like the one at West.
user314
> davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
08/06/2020 at 10:02 |
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People need to go to jail for this. Unfortunately, it will be the wrong people.
An unspecified number of port officials were placed on house arrest on Wednesday pending an investigation by the Lebanese government that is expected to take five days. Humans Rights Watch called for an independent probe into the blast, citing “serious concerns about the ability of the Lebanese judiciary to conduct a credible and transparent investigation on its own,”
the BBC
reported.
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davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
> user314
08/06/2020 at 10:21 |
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As effed up as the U.S. is in many ways, things could always
be much, much worse.
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davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
> themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
08/06/2020 at 10:22 |
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Thanks - this is really well done.
This video was created before the determination that it was a criminal act.
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user314
> RacinBob
08/06/2020 at 10:31 |
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themanwithsauce - has as many vehicles as job titles
> davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com
08/06/2020 at 12:50 |
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That sounds very likely that it was intentionally set, but there has yet to be conclusive evidence or suspects to confirm that. The original report of it being a criminal act wasn’t that they found evidence for that, but rather there was a lack of evidence that it was an accident . While it is all but determined the fire originated from a source internally, it is still not clear what the initial event was. This was an older building with very lackluster safety systems in place and, sadly, the city paid the price for their negligence .