The New York Times - USA (2020-08-06)

HASSAN AMMAR/ASSOCIATED PRESS

THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2020 Y A

Raging Fire That Spread

The explosion that ripped through large parts of

Beirut was preceded by a raging fire in a port

warehouse. A correspondent for The Los Angeles

Times first reported the fire around 5:54 p.m.

local time, posting an image of the smoke on

Twitter and noting the sound of an explosion. For

the next 14 minutes, the fire blazed as emergency

workers responded.

A video filmed from a nearby high-rise cap-

tured what happened next. Emergency vehicles

with flashing lights can be seen responding to the

fire and smoke, and other videos posted on social

media showed firefighters in action at the ware-

house at roughly the same time. Then, the blaze

appears to rapidly accelerate, followed by a large

explosion. Thirty-five seconds later, at around

6:08 p.m. local time, a final, much larger blast

completely envelops the area.

According to the Lebanese government, the

source of the explosion was 2,750 tons of ammo-

nium nitrate, an explosive chemical often used as

fertilizer and sometimes in bombs, which had

been stored in the port warehouse after being

confiscated from an abandoned Russian-owned

ship in 2014. In the following years, court records

show, senior customs officials had tried and failed

to win court permission to remove the dangerous

stockpile by donating it to the Lebanese Army or

selling it to the privately owned Lebanese Explo-

sives Company.

Such a stockpile, if ignited, could easily cause

the kind of blast and devastation seen in Beirut.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported

that the fire first ignited fireworks, and some

videos showed flashes that could indicate fire-

works and would not have been caused by ammo-

nium nitrate.

Another news channel, LBCI, reported that

welding work being conducted on the warehouse

started the fire.

Whatever caused it, the fire apparently

spread to the ammonium nitrate.

The dark and reddish color of the debris and

smoke cloud that towered above the blast sug-

gests two things: that ammonium nitrate was

present and that it was not military grade, accord-

ing to Dr. Rachel Lance, an explosives expert.

Explosions with extremely dark smoke plumes

indicate that not all of the explosive material

burned up, meaning it was not a military explo-

sive, and ammonium nitrate burns reddish, she

wrote in an email.

Widespread Damage

Satellite images taken one day later show the

scale of the explosion and confirm its exact loca-

tion, a warehouse next to the Beirut Port grain

silos. Only a gaping hole filled with water, approx-

imately 460 feet in diameter, is left where the

warehouse stood.

The images show how the explosion de-

stroyed or damaged most structures in the port,

over an area of about 160 acres. Only the con-

tainer terminal to the east appears to remain

largely intact.

The explosion was so intense that it capsized

a large ship, 1,500 feet to its east. The 390-foot-

long passenger ship, Orient Queen, can be seen

flipped to its side in satellite images. Outside the

commercial port area, an entertainment arena

collapsed, and debris from damaged buildings

litters the street.

Destructive Pressure Wave

The most dramatic videos of the blast show a

white dome expanding rapidly through the air.

This is an overpressure wave caused by the mass

of exploding ammonium nitrate pushing mole-

cules of humid air against each other as it moves.

The wave reflects and bounces, destroying some

buildings while leaving others relatively undam-

aged. Some people on social media misinterpreted

it as an atomic “mushroom cloud.”

While we don’t know how the ammonium

nitrate was stored in the warehouse, which would

affect its explosive power, the chemical can be as

much as 40 percent as powerful as TNT. The

detonation of 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate

would make the Beirut event one of the most

powerful accidental industrial explosions on

record and could produce enough overpressure to

shatter glass 1.25 miles away.

Overwhelmed Hospitals

Beirut’s port is centrally located, and thousands

of people live in residential neighborhoods along

the seaside within a mile of the blast. Videos

showed the pressure wave flattening cars and

speeding destructively through churches,

mosques, apartments and shopping malls, includ-

ing the Beirut Souks, which opened in 2009 after

being rebuilt following the civil war.

At least five hospitals were located within a

mile and a quarter of the explosion, and around a

dozen more were close enough to feel its effects.

Images showed shattered glass and destruc-

tion inside rooms at the American University in

Beirut Hospital, 1.86 miles away. At BMG Bikhazi

Medical Group, about the same distance from the

blast, a doctor said the ceiling had fallen on some

patients. “The pressure was horrific. We heard a

boom, then everything was shaking,” he said.

Nurses and doctors at some hospitals were

forced to turn patients away and treat others in

dark parking lots by the light of their phones.

Inside the port itself, the blast ruined the

country’s main grain silos, spilling 15,000 tons of

their contents onto the ground, according to the

economy minister. Lebanon now has less than a

month of grain reserves but is expecting enough

imports to avoid a crisis, the minister said.

Beirut was not the first place to suffer horrific

damage from an ammonium nitrate explosion.

In 2015, 800 tons of ammonium nitrate ignited

in one of China’s busiest seaports, in Tianjin,

causing a blast that killed 173 people and injured

nearly 800.

Video Footage Offers Clues

To a Blast’s Origin and Power

This article is by Evan Hill, Stella Cooper, Christiaan Triebert, Christoph Koettl, Drew Jordan, Dmitriy Khavinand John Ismay.

The huge explosion in Beirut’s port on Tuesday shattered windows more than a mile away and sent a plume of smoke and debris soar-

ing above the city’s tallest buildings. The blast was so intense that it was felt at least 150 miles away in Cyprus. It killed at least 135

people, injured at least 5,000 and left dozens missing. About 300,000 other people were displaced from their homes. The Times re-

viewed more than 70 videos of the explosion and satellite images of its aftermath to better understand what happened. Here is what

the available visual evidence indicates about the blast and the devastation it left behind.

A view, top, of Beirut’s port before the blast, and a close-up afterward.

Most of the buildings were destroyed, and a nearby ship was capsized.

PLANET LABS

Emergency workers responded to a fire at a port warehouse at about 6

p.m. local time. Minutes later, an enormous explosion obliterated the area.

GOOGLE, LEFT; ALI S. HARFOUCH

GOOGLE, LEFT; @FARAHHILAL_

Damage from the explosion could be seen across a wide swath of Beirut.

GOOGLE, LEFT; @FARAHHILAL_

Maria Abi Habib, Muyi Xiao and Haley Willis

contributed reporting. David Botti contributed

production.

Lebanese officials say that
thousands of tons of ammonium
nitrate stored in a warehouse at
the port in Beirut caused the
powerful explosion that devastat-
ed the city on Tuesday, killing
more than 130 people, injuring at
least 4,000 and displacing
300,000 from their homes.
Ammonium nitrate is used in
fertilizer and in the mining in-
dustry as an explosive to blast
rock and move mounds of earth.
It has some military applications
as well.
It has previously been the
cause of industrial accidents, and
an ingredient in acts of terrorism
as well. It was used by white
supremacists to blow up the
Alfred P. Murrah Federal Build-
ing in Oklahoma City, in 1995.

What happened in Beirut?

Videos posted online from the
Beirut waterfront on Aug. 4
showed an epic disaster unfold
with terrifying speed. White
smoke billowing from a fire
burning out of control in a ware-
house near towering grain silos
gave way to a massive explosion
of reddish-black smoke. A spheri-
cal cloud of water vapor formed
as the shock wave raced out-
ward, wrapping around the silos,
and disappearing into downtown
Beirut. Videos taken closer to the
explosion showed how a wall of
compressed air shattered every-
thing in its path as it moved
closer, eventually sending the
cameras themselves flying.

What caused such a big blast?
According to the Lebanese gov-
ernment, about 2,750 tons of
ammonium nitrate fertilizer was
stored in a warehouse on the
Beirut waterfront and caught
fire, later exploding. The fertil-
izer arrived in the city more than
six years ago aboard a Russian-
owned cargo ship that made an
unscheduled stop in the city.
Lebanese port officials said they
made several requests to the
courts to have the stockpile
removed, but got no response.

How could fertilizer explode?

Ammonium nitrate, by itself, is
relatively harmless. But if added
to a fuel source, and subjected to
intense stresses like heat and
pressure, it can explode. Al-
though we do not know exactly
what happened yet in Beirut, the
sheer size of the collected ammo-
nium nitrate offers some clues. If
subjected to fire in such bulk
quantities, and in a semi-con-
tained environment like a ware-
house, the potential for detona-
tion is strong.

Has this happened before?

Yes. In 1947, an explosion in

Texas City, Texas, killed at least

581 people and wounded 3,

after two cargo ships carrying

ammonium nitrate caught fire. In

2013, a fertilizer plant in West,

Texas, caught fire and exploded,

killing 15 people. In 2015, a fertil-

izer explosion in Tianjin, China,

killed 165 people at a busy sea-

port. Many Americans were

introduced to the dangers of

ammonium nitrate from the

Oklahoma City attack by white

supremacists in 1995. Two tons of

the fertilizer were mixed with

diesel fuel to create a bomb

placed inside a rental truck that

detonated in front of the building.

How powerful was the explosion in

Beirut?

It was one of the largest non-

nuclear explosions in recent

history, according to Brian Cast-

ner, lead weapons investigator

for Amnesty International’s

Crisis Response Team. “It’s the

biggest explosion in an urban

area in decades,” he said. “The

human impact of it is the impor-

tant thing, and it affected people

a dozen kilometers away.”

While it is difficult to precisely

calibrate the force of the Beirut

explosion, the U.S. military offers

a formula that allows bomb

technicians a quick way to calcu-

late the power of a blast, by

converting the weight of a known

quantity of explosives to that of

TNT. There were 2,750 tons of

the fertilizer in the Beirut ware-

house, roughly equivalent to

1,155 tons of TNT, which would

produce a large enough blast

wave to destroy most buildings

within around 800 feet, and

would shatter glass far beyond a

range of 1.25 miles.

How does that compare to bombs?

It is many times larger than the

most powerful conventional

airdropped bomb in the U.S.

arsenal, which was used in com-

bat for the first time in 2017. That

bomb, the GBU-43 Massive

Ordnance Air Blast, has a net

explosive weight of 18,

pounds or roughly 9.35 tons of

TNT, according to U.S. Army

data. But the Beirut explosion

was far smaller than the 15,000-

ton TNT equivalent of the small-

est nuclear weapon ever used in

war, which was dropped on Hiro-

shima 75 years ago Thursday.

Could it happen elsewhere?

That partly depends on the en-

forcement of safety regulations,

which can vary by country. In the

United States, the Espionage Act

of 1917 gave the Coast Guard

strict regulatory oversight of all

port facilities — specifically to

prevent large explosions. While

intended to foil sabotage at-

tempts, the regulations tightly

control movements and storage

of hazardous materials like am-

monium nitrate.

What Is Ammonium Nitrate,

Blamed in Beirut Explosion?

By JOHN ISMAY

John Ismay was a bomb disposal
officer in the U.S. Navy before he
became a reporter for The Times
Magazine’s At War section. Here
is the information he has gath-
ered about the explosion in
Beirut.