I hope people realise why I chose that topic title, given that there's an ongoing thread about post apocalyptic stories. Not being flippant or callous; just a segue if you will to an unfortunately very real disaster.

The recent tragedy at the Port of Beirut was almost as if a nuclear bomb went off (2750 tons of ammonium nitrate!!)- the before and after satellite shots are sobering indeed, as is the footage of the explosion.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8594979/Beirut-blast-survivors-sift-rubble-bodies-death-toll-continues-rise.html

I believe offers of humanitarian aid flights are being made from several countries - It appears that Beirut airport is still operational despite a bit of damage..

 

 

 

Very bad, indeed.  Also, just shown on the news (fairly unsettling video) about a wedding shoot going on at that time.  No injuries here!

 

This is one cruise ship which won't be doing any more cruising:

I used to live in Halifax and my old school was metres from where the crater was from the Halifax Explosion back in 1917, that one was the largest man made explosion that wasn't nuclear and held that tittle for almost 100 years, it was around 2000 people killed and 10,000 injuries. Therefore spend my life learning about that explosion and the legacy of it. 

When I saw this it had all the same tell tale signs, fire that spread, then flash point and the big explosion. In Halifax the biggest injuries were eye injuries from people watching the fire, then when the explosion hit so many people were permanently blinded. I am certain we will see a lot of this from Beirut as well as we now live in a generation of smart phones that record everything.

I was thinking exactly the same thing, Matthew. As soon as I heard that it was 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate, my first thought was......Halifax, Nova Scotia. The before and after top down views of the dock in Beirut are very sobering, and probably indicate that a circular area around and including the warehouse was probably vaporised by the blast. After all, that is 2.7 kilotons of explosive material detonating at the same time.

I thought about Halifax as well. According to initial estimates that are quoted on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_artificial_non-nuclear_explosions , the Halifax explosion was about 2-3 times as strong as Beirut. Absolutely horrible what happened in Beirut.

Peter

Why is the yield (relatively) small for the Beirut explosion when compared to Halifax? I am reasonably sure that the latter was caused by the detonation of around 3000 tons of ammonium nitrate, so the amount of explosive material is not all that different.....

I wonder if that grain silo shielded some of the city from the blast.

Storing 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate in a large city for years:  What could wrong?  

Can't have politics in this Forum, but whose currently running the Lebanese government in the background?  

The report I linked to mentioned that the storage, or the way the fertilizer was stored had been protested about since 2014

4 hours ago, Christopher Low said:

Why is the yield (relatively) small for the Beirut explosion when compared to Halifax?

Halifax was high explosives going up, not fertilizer. Ammonium nitrate has a relative effectiveness of 0.42 that of actual TNT (fortunately). Had 2750 tons of TNT gone off I doubt we would be seeing some of the video footage..

 Scroll down for the table in this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent

19 hours ago, Matthew Kane said:

I used to live in Halifax and my old school was metres from where the crater was from the Halifax Explosion back in 1917, that one was the largest man made explosion that wasn't nuclear and held that tittle for almost 100 years

I currently live in Halifax and that was my first thought too.  There was actually a recently uncovered photo captured just after the Halifax Explosion blast and even the explosion/cloud shape is eerily similar.

My second thought was about how Boston jumped to our assistance and that Halifax and Canada should do the same for Beirut.  

Halifax has a very large and strong Lebanese community and strong connections to the country, the Lebanese flag is currently flying at half mast in front of our city hall.

Edited August 6, 20205 yr by regis9

5 hours ago, regis9 said:

Halifax has a very large and strong Lebanese community and strong connections to the country, the Lebanese flag is currently flying at half mast in front of our city hall.

Yes my Lebanese friends from Halifax have been posting a lot over social media this week, absolutely they grew up with the Halifax Explosion stories as well, and when this happened they see it from a distance but have a lot of insight about it, very heartbreaking.