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

A2 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, AUGUST 6, 2020

Journalists don’t always need years of

schooling in a subject to be able to report

effectively on it. You don’t have to be a

graduate of Juilliard to profile a cellist. You

don’t need to have played in the N.F.L. to

cover the Jets. But sometimes, the back-

grounds we bring to our reporting fields

can be invaluable. I cover armed conflict

for The Times Magazine’s At War section,

and over the past few weeks, my experi-

ences as a former naval officer have come

in handy in helping colleagues across the

newsroom cover three breaking stories.

The first story was about a fire that

broke out on July 12 on the U.S.S. Bon-

homme Richard, a large amphibious as-

sault ship that was docked in San Diego.

The firefighting training I received after

getting my commission in 1999, combined

with my subsequent experience working

on a destroyer, allowed me to dig deeper

into how such a blaze might have erupted.

I found people who had served on the

Bonhomme Richard as firefighting leaders,

and in talking shop, we were able to ex-

plore a reasonable series of conditions that

may have contributed to the devastation.

In Portland, Ore., when I saw video of a

man named Christopher David being

beaten after walking up to federal law

enforcement officers during a protest on

July 19, I spotted something familiar: He

was wearing a sweatshirt issued to new

midshipmen on their first day at the U.S.

Naval Academy. I reached out to him via

Twitter and learned he was in the class of

1988. Our common language helped me
      understand Mr. David’s argument when he
      called the federal officers’ behavior a “fail-
      ure of leadership,” and I expanded the
      interview into its own article.
      After I served aboard a warship, I transi-
      tioned to a part of the Navy called explo-
      sive ordnance disposal, and the 10 months
      I spent learning the basics of being a bomb
      squad technician in the early 2000s be-
      came an asset when the first videos
      emerged on Tuesday of the explosions on
      Beirut’s waterfront. I watched and re-
      watched the videos for clues about what
      might have happened, texted buddies I’d
      served with and posted queries in a couple
      of Facebook groups that were open only to

current and former bomb techs.

When a spokesperson for the Lebanese

government issued a statement pointing to

2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer

as the most likely culprit, I started pulling

out old handbooks and running the num-

bers. To gauge the expected blast and

fragmentary effects of exploding muni-

tions, we were trained to determine first

which explosive material was present and

then calculate its comparative weight in

TNT to use as a reference point. But for

ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer stored in

bulk, there is no simple textbook answer.

There were multiple factors to consider

— including how the fertilizer might have

degraded after years in relatively open

storage near the water and whether there

were other compounds present that may

have contributed to the blast — so I had to

interpret them as best I could. The worst-

case scenario I proposed was that these

thousands of tons of fertilizer had about

40 percent of the power of TNT. I built a

spreadsheet that calculated how strong the

blast would be at various ranges and what

the resultant damage might be at each. I

shared it with colleagues while they were

busily geo-locating videos of the aftermath

taken from social media posts.

My 40 percent figure seems to have held

up, given the video evidence so far of dam-

aged buildings thousands of feet away.

Those 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate

would have had the power of about 2.

million pounds of TNT when it exploded —

far more than the most powerful conven-

tional U.S. air-dropped bomb, but less than

one-thirteenth the 15,000-ton TNT equiva-

lent of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiro-

shima 75 years ago this month.

In much smaller quantities, burning

ammonium nitrate might not explode. But

similar incidents around the world have

shown that when thousands of tons of it

catch fire in a contained environment, the

additional heat and pressure can lead to a

mass detonation. My hope was that by

examining this the way I was trained in the

Navy, I could offer some context on how

something as seemingly innocuous as

fertilizer could cause so much damage.

As I learn more about what happened,

you’ll be the first to know.

Inside The Times

THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

While serving in a Navy explosive ordnance disposal unit, John Ismay deployed to Iraq in 2007.

VIA JOHN ISMAY

Part of My Skill Set? Bomb Training

By JOHN ISMAY

August 6, 1963.At a ceremony in Moscow, the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union

signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited nuclear tests “in the atmosphere, in

space and under water,” The Times reported. Though the treaty permitted underground

testing, it was regarded as a significant first step in controlling nuclear weapons. But

Dean Rusk, the U.S. secretary of state, said: “It does not end the threat of nuclear war.”

Subscribers can browse the complete Times archives through 2002 at timesmachine.nytimes.com.

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