[HN Gopher] Welders set off Beirut blast while securing explosives
___________________________________________________________________
Welders set off Beirut blast while securing explosives
Author : tafda
Score : 383 points
Date : 2020-08-14 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.maritime-executive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.maritime-executive.com)
| olivermarks wrote:
| https://asiatimes.com/2020/08/who-profits-from-the-beirut-bl...
| an alternative perspective which has a level of detail and
| questions that has been missing from western media but is
| arguably from a hostile source
| olivermarks wrote:
| non paywall link https://www.globalresearch.ca/who-profits-
| beirut-blast/57206...
| the-pigeon wrote:
| Doesn't really say anything useful.
|
| It is just bringing up that various hostile parties could
| have known about the ammonium nitrate being there and had
| motivation to blow it up.
|
| Which yeah duh. But having the motivation and the means to do
| something is not evidence that you did it.
|
| The actual evidence completely lines up with the original
| post. Not to say we shouldn't consider the conspiracy
| theories just that this one like the others isn't supported
| by the evidence.
| jcranmer wrote:
| I downvoted you because the article you link is basically
| insane conspiratorializing, based on the non-paywall link in
| the sibling comment.
|
| It doesn't even keep the conspiracy theories straight:
|
| * It was a plot by Russia to give explosives to Syria in a
| roundabout way [but it sits in Beirut for years despite being
| nominally in the hands of the people who are supposed to be
| delivering it?]
|
| * Israel blew it up with a secret missile/bomb/weapon thinking
| it was a Hezbollah weapons cache and only realized their
| mistake after too much went up [because hyper-competent spy
| agency somehow decides that the best way to take out a large
| amount of explosive that dominates the list of largest non-
| nuclear explosions is to blow it up, or maybe they somehow did
| the intel figuring there was a large weapons cache but couldn't
| figure out what it was?]
|
| * It's a US-France-Saudi conspiracy to seize control of the
| Lebanese economy and destroy the Chinese Belt-and-Road
| Initiative [that last bit comes out of nowhere actually].
| olivermarks wrote:
| Happy to be downvoted on HN! I agree there is much conjecture
| and projections in the article but it does provide various
| facts about the peculiar route the materials took to get to
| Beirut, lots of other questions about lack of bureaucratic
| oversight etc etc...
|
| I do feel there is a dangerous trend towards labelling
| investigative journalism as 'conspiracy theories' and
| 'insane'. Facts are always interesting, ideas about them
| often less so.
| ufmace wrote:
| That article seems to be a weird mish-mash of 3-5 contradictory
| conspiracy theories. It rants a good long while about how
| various forces in various countries want to take control of
| Lebanon etc through various means. Okay maybe it's true that
| they would want to do that, but how are any of these forces
| responsible for the local authorities keeping thousands of tons
| of explosives in a port warehouse for years, and then deciding
| to store some fireworks in there too, and then having somebody
| try to weld on the door of that warehouse?
|
| I mean, I don't even say "conspiracy theory" in a hostile way.
| It's not impossible that one of those is actually true. But if
| we're supposed to be convinced of any of them, how about if
| they at least pick one and stick to it, and then maybe provide
| something more solid than wild speculation about how/why it
| would have happened in that particular way? A few vague tweets
| by the Israeli PM that could mean pretty much anything doesn't
| prove much, nor does a claim by a source based in a country
| hostile to the US to have seen multiple US reconnaissance
| planes of an unspecified type in the area at some unspecified
| time and location and means of detection.
| chromaton wrote:
| One thing I haven't heard about yet: who was paying for all that
| prime warehouse storage space all these years?
| llacb47 wrote:
| http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
| rmason wrote:
| I worked in the fertilizer business and my company sold ammonium
| nitrate to farmers, mostly for use on potatoes. You need to use
| extreme care with this fertilizer.
|
| No one could purchase it (even before Oklahoma City) without us
| knowing them. After Oklahoma City some TV stations in Grand
| Rapids sent reporters undercover trying to make purchases and
| they failed.
|
| You need either dynamite or a substantial amount of heat to cause
| ammonium nitrate to explode. My boss tried to create a farm pond
| with it and his initial attempt failed. He failed to use enough
| dynamite ;<).
|
| Personally I'd nominate the Beirut Port Authority for a Darwin
| award. Without the fireworks being stored in the building the
| welders sparks wouldn't have caused the explosion.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Welders next to fireworks next to ammonium nitrate
| frankhhhhhhhhh wrote:
| Reads like a cartoon to me.
| [deleted]
| rock_hard wrote:
| ...BOOM!
| zentiggr wrote:
| That is one definition of tertiary explosive, set off by
| secondary explosive, set off by primary flame source...
|
| Ouch. I've done shipyard work. A lot of care was taken (on
| average) to ensure sparks and castoff didn't affect adjacent
| work even a couple of feet away. Causing a chain reaction in a
| warehouse? Damn.
| DataWorker wrote:
| Surprised Epstein's prison guards aren't involved somehow.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Welding, roof work, grinding. Those three are responsible for a
| good chunk of all fires. I've done quite a bit of all three and
| have to confess that once or twice I was lucky rather than smart
| to have no bad effects from a _very_ small mistake. When
| grinding, all it takes is a rag used to degrease something days
| before at 30 ' to set it on fire. When welding you _really_ want
| to keep a very good idea of what is on the other side of your
| weld at all times. Surprise: a box member of a car filled with PU
| foam. I really never saw that one coming. And finally, when
| working on a roof a friend of mine did not properly calculate in
| the effect of an exothermic reaction in a vat of resin exposed to
| the sun. Close call that one, averted by denying oxygen to the
| already burning vat.
|
| This one is on a completely different level though, and I'm sure
| that the welders did not live to tell the tale. Even so, before
| you go and claim they were stupid you have to take into account
| that this is Beirut, not exactly a place where the local OHSA is
| going to beat down the doors to ensure everything is done safely
| and by the book, that in a harbor there are always lots of
| dangerous things in close proximity and that they may have taken
| all possible precautions and still ended up drawing an unlucky
| card.
|
| It _really_ doesn 't take much.
| rlonstein wrote:
| Quite. Once I was cutting out the rusted exhaust of a
| commercial truck with an ox-acetylene torch when the guy two
| bays away from me decided it was a good time to apply underbody
| coat to a new truck. The head mechanic started screaming and
| running around opening bays and we both stopped, probably
| saving us all.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| This is also a reason why many industrial shops
| (manufacturing or major repair centers) have separate bays
| for things like that. It's harder to set up for smaller
| operations, but by keeping them physically separated (never
| applying paint or flammable things in the vicinity of where a
| welding torch might be used) you eliminate a great deal of
| risk.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > It really doesn't take much.
|
| I always remember the Imperial Sugar Factory. _Dust_ is enough.
| Sugar dust is violently explosive.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg7mLSG-Yws
| jacquesm wrote:
| Dust is pretty much ideal from a reactive surface point of
| view, it is even better than a fluid because it readily mixes
| with air and is immediately explosive in that combination,
| the activation energy required to set it off is next to
| nothing.
| imglorp wrote:
| > Surprise: a box member of a car filled with PU foam.
|
| Groan. I (novice) lit my Xterra on fire while welding on the
| wheel well. I was going at it and then heard that "whoomph" you
| never want to hear, and thick white smoke started coming from
| under the dash. Taking a chance, I ran to grab a small fire
| extinguisher, pointed it up under the dash, and emptied it. The
| cabin was full of that nasty powder but the fire stopped, and I
| never did find what was on fire. All the wiring seemed to work
| by some miracle. But yeah, that could easily have taken the
| house with it. Definitely know what's behind the weld.
| Florin_Andrei wrote:
| > _when working on a roof a friend of mine did not properly
| calculate in the effect of an exothermic reaction in a vat of
| resin exposed to the sun_
|
| I see now. The other two were obvious, but roof work seemed
| counter-intuitive. But if epoxy is used in the process, then
| yeah, I totally see that. I ended up with a garage full of
| smoke a couple times from working with more resin than I really
| needed for my projects.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Retrospectively we came to the conclusion that he had mixed
| in too much hardener. Incredible how fast that went. From
| 'hot to the touch' to 'poof'. Nearly colorless flame too,
| super dangerous. Fortunately I got it covered before it got
| worse. That wasn't heroic either, I had to get past the
| bloody vat to get to safety so I figured I'd better stop it
| burning first.
| m4rtink wrote:
| Roof work sometimes involves applying tarpaper with a.small
| flame thrower. That genereates quite a few fires.if you are
| not careful.
| myself248 wrote:
| It blows my mind that the torch isn't fed with two hoses:
| One of propane-or-whatever, and one of CO2. If something
| goes badly, you literally move one finger and start
| extinguishing the fire.
|
| Why on earth would you want the problem closer at-hand than
| the solution?
| oliveshell wrote:
| Yup. My uncle's house burned down, years ago, due to
| careless use of a torch to apply tar roofing.
| janekm wrote:
| But presumably also the common use of big torches for
| materials like torch-on-felt?
| [deleted]
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Crappy electrical appliances (anything that charges a battery,
| powers a heating element or spins a low torque electric motor)
| cause far more fires then welding and grinding and other
| hazardous operations that internet commenters love to clutch
| pearls over are just so rare by comparison.
|
| For every hour that someone has an arc struck there's a battery
| sitting on a charger for an order of magnitude more hours.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > It really doesn't take much.
|
| Setting fire to ones own clothes is surprisingly easy with a
| grinder, and when you're up a ladder that's particularly bad.
| pengaru wrote:
| Before I got my auto-darkening mask when first learning GTAW
| welding I had a few close calls. The window is so dark you
| simply have no sense that a fire has started until it may be
| too late, you can't see anything at all unless it's the
| brightness of a lightning bolt.
|
| Even with the auto-darkening window the field of view is
| substantially reduced.
|
| I wonder if in the future welding masks will integrate fire
| alarms.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I wonder if in the future welding masks will integrate fire
| alarms.
|
| I don't really see that as a feature anyone wants.
|
| It's pretty easy and straightforward to buy a fire/CO alarm
| and keep it near you. If you need to be mobile, it seems
| straight forward to put them on a cheap chest rig.
|
| I get that there might be some convenience factor involved,
| but:
|
| 1. It's pretty terrible UX to add weight to people's heads.
| Even a little bit makes everything a lot worse.
|
| 2. Having an alarm integrated into a mask is going to a
| Gillette razor blades / HP inkjet situation, where the alarms
| have to be changed out every 6 months and cost $200. There is
| great virtue in staying on the path of high volume and
| multiple suppliers.
| scsilver wrote:
| I could see it being an additional feature to AR masks, add
| a ir sensor and some machine learning to classify as
| welding spark vs material or liquid fire and you don't need
| to change parts.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| they will not. ever. wanna know why? economics. until economy
| is taken out, it will always prevail
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| That's why we have rules, regulations, and laws.
| jcampbell1 wrote:
| I consider a CO2 Fire extinguisher as standard as a metal
| brush. Keep it just as close as your brush and the pin out. I
| used to TiG and the fire risk is at least predictable and
| reasonably avoidable. With a MiG, you can start a fire 8 feet
| away.
|
| The auto-dark can be a mixed bag as you leave it down longer
| and less likely to notice a fire due to the field of view
| that you mention.
|
| I'm not sure how you would build a fire alarm. Coatings tend
| to smoke so detecting ionized air would probably just drive
| you nuts.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Modern auto-dark shields have periferal vision windows.
|
| One of the most used brands around these parts is SpeedGlas
| by 3M
|
| https://www.awsi.com.au/3m-speedglas-9100xxi-welding-
| helmet-...
| hinkley wrote:
| May end up being a good use for a VR headset. Pass-through
| video with HDR support.
| kibwen wrote:
| This seems like such a cool idea that I wonder if anyone's
| already working on it. I've only done the most meager
| amount of welding, but the "position the tools exactly
| where you need them to be, snap your head to flip the visor
| down, do the task while barely being able to see what
| you're doing, then manually flip the visor back up"
| workflow seems like it could be improved. The auto-
| darkening visors mean less fiddling with the mask, but you
| still can't really see what you're doing, and I think the
| jury is out on whether or not long-term use of the auto-
| darkening visors will damage your eyes based on the teensy
| amount of flash exposure you get with each weld. I wonder
| if a specialized camera could provide better visibility in
| the extreme brightness.
| hinkley wrote:
| I meant to ask: Do you guys close your eyes for a moment
| when you start the weld, or just burn your retinas a
| little bit?
|
| Sounds like the latter...
| jacquesm wrote:
| I close my eyes. And I have a pretty fast set of glasses
| even so it's not enough to be able to avoid a blind spot
| after an hour or more of work. Better safe than sorry.
| The auto darkening glasses make it much easier to start a
| weld though, you know exactly where you are relative to
| the workpiece, which especially with stick welding is the
| difference between a lot of cursing + frustration and
| some reasonably good work.
| kibwen wrote:
| I believe my machinist friends call this the "safety
| squint". :P Their attitude appears to be that a little
| bit of flash from occasional welding isn't going to hurt
| you; it's the professional welders who're at it all day
| who need to take the most care.
| cma wrote:
| This is actually how HDR image processing was invented:
|
| http://wearcam.org/mannventionz/mannglas.htm
| jacquesm wrote:
| Steve Mann is a super interesting and very nice
| character.
| hinkley wrote:
| Oh _that_ Steve Mann.
|
| Yeah I probably fished that idea out of long term memory.
| hinkley wrote:
| So besides 1) looking like a cyberman and 2) likely being
| dangerously clunky for working up high, I wonder why
| these didn't take off?
| hinkley wrote:
| An AvE aphorism: If your welds sound like
| bacon you're doin' just fine. If they smell like bacon,
| partner, you're on fire.
|
| Given he has covered a couple of deadly crane collapses, I'll
| be surprised if he doesn't end up talking about this accident
| too.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I had never heard that one. I do have a strong memory of a
| small bit of spatter from a welding arc ending up in my boot.
| Never knew I could dance that well. That's why I prefer to
| never use resin core for wire welding because it spatters
| like mad. Better use solid core and gas, if it is available
| (unfortunately not always).
| mindcrime wrote:
| _I do have a strong memory of a small bit of spatter from a
| welding arc ending up in my boot. Never knew I could dance
| that well._
|
| I had the same experience during Welding class in high-
| school. _Not_ fun. :-(
| newtoday wrote:
| I'll add that if you're not wearing an apron, definitely
| don't tuck in your shirt!
| jacquesm wrote:
| I hope that you got by the particular bit of knowledge in
| the theoretical rather than the practical manner.
| mindcrime wrote:
| _It really doesn 't take much._
|
| It really doesn't. You don't even need a grinder. Oily rags can
| ignite spontaneously. People usually laugh at the phrase
| "spontaneous combustion" because it's so often associated with
| "spontaneous human combustion." But actual "spontaneous
| combustion" does happen in certain (not uncommon)
| circumstances. See: https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/Files/Public-
| Education/Resource...
|
| And what makes things even scarier, is realizing that
| buildings, ships, etc. that are either under construction or
| undergoing maintenance are more "at risk" because alarm
| systems, automatic fire suppression systems (eg, sprinklers),
| etc. are often times not in place yet, or disabled, while work
| is going on.
|
| This is one reason it's so common to see a building complex
| that is under construction burn to the dirt if it catches fire,
| as opposed to a finished building where you might get a "room
| and contents" fire. No sheetrock, just miles and miles of
| exposed wood, no sprinklers, no alarm - recipe for disaster.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Talking about that, lots of lithium pouch thrown in bins. Be
| warned.
|
| ps: some videos to show how stupid a rag setup goes into fire
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=self%20combusti.
| ..
| nostrademons wrote:
| > Oily rags can ignite spontaneously.
|
| That happened to a friend of mine. He was doing some
| woodworking and threw a linseed-oil soaked rag in the trash,
| then went to work. He returned home to his apartment on fire
| and a bunch of firetrucks blocking the driveway. Linseed oil
| apparently spontaneously combusts at 120 degrees and
| generates heat as it dries, so it can cause a fire in normal
| 70-80 degree weather.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Oily rags are super dangerous. Depends on the type of oil or
| thinner but definitely something to keep in a small sealed
| metal container.
| black6 wrote:
| Linseed oil is the usual culprit. It oxidizes more readily
| than other oils at room temperature, and a pile of rags can
| insulate enough for the center to reach autoignition
| temperatures. The low smoke point for linseed oil also
| makes it well-suited for seasoning cast-iron cookware (only
| be sure, please, not to use _boiled_ linseed oil, as it
| contains lead.)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Linseed oil is just flaxseed oil, and I've found that the
| latter term is used in cooking contexts, whereas linseed
| oil is a term used in various industries that use
| industrial grade flaxseed oil.
|
| I make this distinction because when I went to buy
| "linseed oil" to cook with on Amazon a while back, it
| brought me to various linseed oils that were not meant
| for human consumption.
| Arainach wrote:
| >low smoke point for linseed oil
|
| I would naively think you would want an oil with a high
| smoke point for seasoning. Can you elaborate on why a low
| smoke point is preferable?
| biomcgary wrote:
| My wife uses linseed oil on cast iron. Almost as good as
| non-stick. Linseed oil has a lot of triply unsaturated
| a-linolenic acid, which is reactive (due to multiple
| double bonds) and supports polymerization. A few thin
| layers of linseed oil added to cast iron and baked to the
| smoke point create a beautiful sheen and make it easy to
| clean.
| black6 wrote:
| You want it to smoke when seasoning. That's an indication
| that free-radicals are being created which set off the
| polymerization of the oil and create the seasoning. Low
| smoke-point oils are more convenient because they start
| polymerizing at lower temps.
| black6 wrote:
| You _don 't_ want it to smoke when cooking, because
| ingesting the free-radicals is generally considered
| unhealthy ;)
| refurb wrote:
| The free radicals don't stick around for very long, maybe
| seconds before they react with something else.
|
| And cooking in general create a bunch of carcinogens like
| acrylamide, etc. You can reduce it, but it's tough to
| eliminate it completely.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| This is a glaring connection I rarely see people make.
|
| In fact, I've been _banging on_ about it for 15 or so
| years, and, I kid you not, you 're the first person I've
| seen being this up.
|
| Strange!
|
| Unusual cross section of knowledge: I studied nutritional
| medicine in a formal capacity for four years 2000 through
| 2003 inclusive, and I'm also a welder by trade.
| jacquesm wrote:
| At the cross roads of knowledge domains interesting
| conclusions can be drawn, and sometimes fruitful cross
| pollination occurs. One thing about the successful
| founders that I know is that they are not confined to
| just one domain, and I have been wondering for a long
| time if that is a trait that helps them to be successful.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Probably not a good idea to store superglue and cotton
| together.
|
| Combustion probably unlikely, but non-zero chance.
| Arainach wrote:
| On an industrial scale, sure. For home/hobby use, laying
| them flat until dry and stiff is plenty sufficient - I
| treat all such exothermic wood finishes with a great deal
| of care, but so long as you're not piling up rags or
| compressing them into a ball you're fine.
| IgorPartola wrote:
| Personally I store them in a fireproof container meant to
| store ashes and inside that they are in ziplock bags.
| After I am done using them I burn them to get rid of
| them. Helps that I don't need stuff like that often.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| The primary danger from oily rags is probably from slip and
| fall on the oil you're working with.
|
| It takes very specific conditions to get oily rags to
| ignite. As a rule you're gonna have a hell of a time
| getting any lubricating oil specifically designed not to
| degrade in a high heat environment because the chemistry
| that keeps those oils stable over a long time at 200deg (or
| whatever) makes them very hard to ignite.
| praptak wrote:
| Speaking of spontaneous combustion - ammonium nitrate will
| spontaneously ignite in the presence of some impurities.
|
| Ammonium nitrate plus zinc powder is a mixture that only
| needs a drop of water or just sufficiently humid air to
| ignite.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Another one is just plain ole organic matter, like mulch.
| Back in my days as a firefighter, our district included the
| county landfill. After one of the hurricanes that came
| through, they had gone around collecting all the downed
| trees, and chipped them up into mulch, and located this
| HUGE pile of mulch at the landfill, where county residents
| could come and get free mulch / wood chips for their
| gardens or whatever. Sounds great, right?
|
| Except it turns out that a huge mountain of decaying
| organic matter, left exposed to the southeast NC sun in
| July and August will periodically catch fire spontaneously.
| We went out there a few times to put that mess out. Not an
| easy task. You have to bring in heavy machinery to dig into
| the piles in order to get to the seat of the fire...and of
| course the landfill was nowhere near a hydrant, so we had
| to call out half the tankers in the county to set up a
| tanker shuttle... uuugggh.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The sun is actually not much of a factor in there. What
| makes this happen is that the mulch rots which is an
| exothermic process and it insulates very good as well. So
| the core temperature of pile will slowly creep up until
| you reach the ignition point. The same will happen to
| bales of hay that are taken from the field too wet.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> buildings, ships, etc. that are either under construction
| or undergoing maintenance are more "at risk" because alarm
| systems, automatic fire suppression systems (eg, sprinklers),
| etc. are often times not in place yet, or disabled, while
| work is going on_
|
| Reminds me of the loss of the Normandie / Lafayette: "At
| 14:30 on 9 February 1942, sparks from a welding torch used by
| Clement Derrick ignited a stack of life vests filled with
| flammable kapok that had been stored in the first-class
| lounge. The flammable varnished woodwork had not yet been
| removed, and the fire spread rapidly. The ship had a very
| efficient fire protection system, but it had been
| disconnected during the conversion and its internal pumping
| system was deactivated." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Nor
| mandie#Fire_and_Capsizin...
| ZanyProgrammer wrote:
| Or the very recent fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard.
| mindcrime wrote:
| This kind of thing is surprisingly common. The recent fire
| on the USS Bonhomme Richard had a similar issue.
|
| _Since the ship was in maintenance, on-board fire-
| suppression systems had been disabled, delaying the onset
| of firefighting efforts, according to Admiral Sobeck_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bonhomme_Richard_(LHD-6)#
| J...
|
| Another one that didn't get as much national attention was
| the fire on the SSG Edward A. Carter, Jr at the Sunny Point
| Military Ocean Terminal back in 2001.
|
| _According to a subsequent Coast Guard report, the ship's
| second assistant engineer started a transfer of about 20
| tons of heavy fuel oil from the port and starboard overflow
| tanks to a central settling tank. The transfer was left
| unsupervised other than by automatic equipment._
|
| _"Their electronic system measured the tank levels and
| sounded an alarm if the preset levels were exceeded,"
| Sledge said. "If you are starting to overfill the tanks, it
| sounds a warning tone."_
|
| _Unfortunately, because cables to several tanks had become
| contaminated with fuel oil, false alarms had become a
| repeated nuisance. The easiest solution was to simply turn
| off the alarms._
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120723160038/http://www.firew
| o...
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| > easiest solution was to simply turn off the alarms
|
| This is so common... it's like the holy trinity of
| "Seconds from Disaster"
| jacquesm wrote:
| The one time you need them...
| tyingq wrote:
| I had a water heater almost start a fire recently. Installer
| didn't shield some plastic insulated cable at a point where
| it exited through a metal hole. Small nick in the insulation
| plus a little time. It made 4 inch diameter black spots
| before the breaker blew.
| organsnyder wrote:
| A local hardware store burned down a while ago because of an
| oily rag. They had a spill in the paint department, and the
| employee who cleaned it up wasn't aware of the precautions
| needed.
| ghaff wrote:
| You don't hear about this danger as much as you used to--
| probably because a lot more paints are water-based than
| used to be the case.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| You hear about stuff like that way more than you used to
| because every time you go on the internet you have to
| skim over the low effort comments pointing out the rare
| failure modes in which everything is dangerous to find
| the real content.
|
| The world doesn't need a lecture on proper jack stand
| usage every time vehicles are mentioned and doesn't need
| a lecture on linseed oil fires every time deck finished
| are mentioned but it gets it anyway.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I for one am pretty happy about the linseed oil stories
| in this thread because the low ignition temperature is
| something that I wasn't aware of.
| imcoconut wrote:
| same
| djmips wrote:
| And it makes me think of fires caused by accidental optical
| focusing of the sun such as a polished metal dog bowl as one
| odd example and others such as hanging glass artwork.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| We had our windows washed last year and came home to a
| fresh burn mark on the floor in the hallway from where
| apparently the sun had been in the exact right spot with
| clean enough windows to focus a beam of light... We were
| fortunate that it didn't focus on something more flammable
| than a hardwood floor.
| mattacular wrote:
| Or catching a translucent bottle of hand sanitizer sitting
| out in the console of your car
| ghastmaster wrote:
| I ran across the image in this tweet of work being done on the
| door to the warehouse a couple hours after the blast. I presumed
| there was welding going on and this set off the fireworks which
| led to the blast. It amazes me how much information can be
| gathered in such a short time compared to just twenty years ago.
| The internet is wonderful.
| https://twitter.com/IntelCrab/status/1290782284686266372
|
| The repairs in the image are probably not the repair that caused
| the blast. That was my thought process though.
| magwa101 wrote:
| Good to understand the core reason for the explosion,
| incompetence.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> Sparks from [the repair team's] welding work ignited a supply
| of fireworks, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate
| cache._
|
| Oh wow, I was wondering what the white-ish sparkles were just
| prior to the explosion. It was the fireworks cache going off,
| which then ignited the 2750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate.
|
| That's an immense amount of Ammonium Nitrate. I suspect one
| outcome of this will be a new ordinance/law will that disallow
| such large caches of explosive material from being stored in the
| same place. Rather it will have to be divvied up and distributed
| to holding facilities out of blast range of each other.
| deadalus wrote:
| Archives :
|
| https://archive.is/vSiKi
|
| and
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200814174018/https://www.marit...
| llacb47 wrote:
| http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
| dcanelhas wrote:
| This news article reminds me of the beginning of the book "Mostly
| Harmless" by Douglas Adams.
| Gerardd wrote:
| We were 600 meters away from the blast walking peacefully in the
| popular Beirut street Mar Mikhael. The scale of the explosion was
| surreal [1]. I hugged my sister and thought it's our last moment.
| We miraculously survived with only a few scratches. Ten days have
| passed and there's not a single minute I don't think of what
| happened and emulate different scenarios where I could've died. I
| also work at the most affected hospital that became instantly
| non-operational and had to be evacuated with over 17 patients,
| staff, and visitors dead [2].
|
| Please consider donating [3].
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/SkIYjNGiaoA
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/JIxuwE_WPXw
|
| [3] https://www.stgeorgehospital.org/stgeorge-donation
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| I'm sorry that you had to go through this.
|
| Is your house damaged? News reports showed several buildings
| which didn't bore the direct brunt of the blast have become
| structurally weakened by the shockwaves and that there are less
| chances that those buildings would be repaired.
|
| If you are living in such a building, it would be wise to move
| away to a safer building far away if possible.
| Gerardd wrote:
| Thank you. My house is 4km away and didn't sustain any
| damage. However other buildings within the same range had
| their glass shattered. The blast was even heard in Cyprus
| (234 km). NASA's ARIA team mapped the likely extent of
| damage: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/nasa-maps-beirut-
| blast-dama...
|
| I also went up to the hospital's helipad today and can see
| the massive crater in direct sight: https://imgur.com/FAtIo4F
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Glad that your house didn't suffer damage.
|
| Supposedly, more than 70,000 building have been damaged[1].
|
| The news report also mentions that there is trouble
| withdrawing money from the banks and that the funds don't
| reach people. Can you please confirm that the hospital
| donation link can accept international funds and that the
| funds really reach to those who need it?
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyEvcmQ8ObA
| Gerardd wrote:
| True, thousands were left homeless. This disaster could
| not have occurred at a worse time for Lebanon. Hospitals
| are already at their maximum capacities due to the
| COVID-19, and the country is in an unprecedented economic
| crisis... The donations will go primarily into rebuilding
| the hospital in order to serve the community again. If
| the donation by card does not work, please consider using
| the bank account wire transfer (Outside of Lebanon IBAN).
| tozeur wrote:
| Yeah, I narrowly escaped a burning building. Freaky stuff.
| ISL wrote:
| Luck plays a huge role in our lives.
|
| In my limited experience with traumatic situations, talking
| with people, especially people who have dealt with similar
| experiences, can help to temper the psychological impact. For
| now, though, just hang in there. Things can get better.
| mlrtime wrote:
| Luck has a huge role in how we were created as well. Think of
| the all the permutations in atoms since the big bang and the
| probability of you even existing.
| martyvis wrote:
| I am always amazed at how people can hold this thought,
| considering the billions of lucky moments that would have
| had to go right over the eons, at the same time as one that
| demands diligence and deliberateness in planning and
| executing on those things in our lives and the world in
| order to make meaningful and successful progress every
| minute of every day
| lostlogin wrote:
| If the alternative is believing that some chap is
| orchestrating it and actually intended for my car keys to
| fall down that tiny hole in the deck because it would
| ultimately be a meaningful success, no thanks.
| gkfasdfasdf wrote:
| And all the mutations in DNA as well to produce a living
| breathing thinking human being! Indeed we are all
| incredibly lucky.
| acqq wrote:
| "Life is quite strange Life is quite weird,
| Life is really quite odd. Life from a star
| is far more bizarre, Than an old bearded bloke
| they call God. So gaze at the sky, and
| start asking why You're even here on this ball.
| For though life is fraught The odds are so short
| You're lucky to be here at all"
|
| (Galaxy DNA Song / Eric Idle)
| sharken wrote:
| Speaking of luck, the Formula 3 crash involving Sophia
| Floersch is one of the craziest displays of luck I can think
| of.
|
| All of it documented here:
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/formula-1/2020/04/23/sophia-
| floe...
| Gerardd wrote:
| Indeed for luck... Things are already better thanks to our
| community and supportive friends and family. Thank you.
| apacheCamel wrote:
| I always heard the phrase: "I'd rather be lucky than good."
| growing up and the older I get, the more I realize just how
| true it is.
| james_s_tayler wrote:
| EMDR also
| [deleted]
| IgorPartola wrote:
| I wish you a speedy physical and metal recovery. Please
| consider getting counseling as there is a good chance you might
| experience symptoms of PTSD and early therapy after a traumatic
| experience can be a lot more effective than similar work down
| the line.
| Gerardd wrote:
| Thank you for your kind words. The hospital's psychiatry
| department already setup a nearby clinic for free support to
| all healthcare workers.
| trhway wrote:
| > there is a good chance you might experience symptoms of
| PTSD and early therapy after a traumatic experience
|
| i think massive traumatic events also result in a kind of
| PTSD at the level of population, and unfortunately there is
| not much we know what to do with it.
|
| Couple other notes. The conspiracy theory is that the
| Mozambique destination was just a cover, and the AN was
| intended for Hezbollah. The Hezbollah affiliated company
| tried to buy the arrested AN, and failing that, Hezbollah was
| also stealing that AN which was conveniently stored in an
| unguarded warehouse with broken door and a hole in the fence
| walls - for years despite numerous alarms raised by various
| people/agencies.
|
| https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-tv-hezbollah-
| apparently...
|
| Also interesting that AN seemed to be Nitroprill as seen on
| the photo in the article (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EeowoGh
| VoAM2_zs?format=jpg&name=...) - googling shows that it is a
| bit more stable form of AN.
| james_s_tayler wrote:
| >i think massive traumatic events also result in a kind of
| PTSD at the level of population, and unfortunately there is
| not much we know what to do with it.
|
| I read The Body Keeps The Score and tried EMDR after that.
| It changed the memory of finding my dad's body after his
| suicide. It's a much less intense memory now because I
| remember it differently in a way that doesn't make me feel
| so abandoned.
|
| Trauma can be healed.
| Wistar wrote:
| An odd thing that spelling, "Nitroprill," as Orica's
| commercial prilled AN specifically for coal mining is
| spelled "Nitropril," with a single "l."
|
| Although Nitropril has stabilizers for resistance to
| breakdown in storage it has no quieting agents for its
| actual explosive effect as does most fertilizer-grade AN.
| anonu wrote:
| The St Georges hospital is doing God's work as are you. A
| wonderful institution that's stood there for 100+ years and
| will keep standing for 100+ more. Thank you for sharing your
| story and the links.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I had a similar personal reaction after getting into a high
| speed car crash (mechanical failure of my car, while traveling
| at 70 mph on the highway. Entered a spin, slid off the road,
| did at least one complete roll). 8 years later, I still
| sometimes think of all the ways the crash could have gone
| differently that would have resulted in my death.
|
| If I was going a little faster, my car could have ended up in
| the irrigation ditch and caused me to drown. The 220 lb combat
| robot in the trunk it could have killed me during the tumble
| (it tore through its straps and ripped through the back seats
| into the car). If I had a passenger, the only part of the roof
| that wasn't crushed in was the driver. A passenger could've
| easily been killed.
|
| The result was a few superficial injuries (bruises from
| seatbelt and airbag system). Unscathed otherwise. Woke up
| thinking the car was on fire (was smoke from airbag) and
| crawled out. Walked down the street to find my phone (it was in
| my backpack which flew out a window during the crash) and
| called for an ambulance.
|
| These are natural human reactions, but the sad truth is that
| many of the things in our lives come down to luck. You can only
| do so much to make your environment safer. I, for one, have
| never transported another one of those combat robots inside my
| vehicle.
|
| edit - 220 pound combat robot, not 300.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Morbid thought: Google Street View right now almost certainly
| has a 360 panorama of the location of your death. An
| intersection, a highway, a hospital, somewhere. That panorama
| will someday be filled with sadness for your loved ones. But
| you don't get to know its coordinates just yet.
| tyingq wrote:
| Statistically, it's usually a hospital, nursing home, or
| your own home. So you may already know the three most
| likely coordinates, if you're old enough that you aren't
| moving again.
| jxramos wrote:
| what part failed on the car?
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Control arm on the front passenger wheel. That corner
| planted into the road and threw the car into a spin.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Was it the control arm or the control arm ball-joint? Did
| you have any warning, i.e. was your suspension really
| loose?
|
| This is something you should have noticed under normal
| circumstances.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| It was used and deemed to be from damage the car had
| taken in an accident prior to us buying it. We knew it
| was involved in an accident previously, but it was
| supposed to have been professionally repaired (we got it
| from a Ford dealership iirc).
|
| As far as anyone could tell post crash, the control arm
| had broken through, rather than coming loose.
| Waterfall wrote:
| Not him but maybe as a uni student he was driving a
| crappy car that had problems before, more bad things
| happen to people without reliable hardware.
| qorrect wrote:
| You actually did die, we've been waiting to tell you. This is
| your third reality, you died back in 2003 also.
| renewiltord wrote:
| It's interesting how different people react to things like
| this. I went off the road and my car rolled and smashed into
| a concrete barrier upside down, squishing every part but
| where I was sitting. I wasn't afraid at any time, immediately
| before, during, or after. The concussion was rough and I had
| a lot of suicidal ideation going on in the next few days,
| though, for no real reason3. I genuinely cannot believe the
| person I was in the next few weeks. Some sort of total sap.
|
| But I don't really think about it anymore and I don't carry
| it with me as anything more than a memory of an incident.
| Objectively, minor changes to circumstances could have led to
| my death, but contemplating that brings me no fear or anger.
|
| This reminds me of the fact that most soldiers going through
| combat don't actually get PTSD1. Even among those seeing
| horrific things it's not that high2.
|
| It's not a tough vs weak thing, imho, just an accident of how
| we are. I didn't do very much to be 184 cm. I didn't do very
| much to have functioning lungs. I didn't do very much to walk
| away from a car crash and be suicidal for two weeks and then
| have no adverse effects after.
|
| 1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2891773/
|
| 2 https://www.psychologicalscience.org/news/releases/why-
| some-...
|
| 3 My life was fine, no one else was hurt, and I had a
| slightly strained calf. The desire for suicide was not driven
| by reason.
| Waterfall wrote:
| This is the kind of comment I enjoy on here. Thank you for
| sharing your human experience. I am not sure when the idea
| of nature/nurture will be put to rest, I have accepted it
| but it also has very strange philosophical ideas, like the
| idea of how laws are made making assumptions about humans,
| but what if the humans are not knowledgeable or understand
| what they are doing, or have different values? We already
| have laws for disabled or other classes of humans, and also
| temporarily insane. This brings up very interesting points
| on how equality is not equal, how laws are complex for the
| purpose of gaming them by those of higher intelligence or
| memory of obscure facts.
|
| Genetics has a lot to do with who we are, our race/looks,
| height, thoughts/intelligence even. Yet many cling to the
| idea that nurture can overcome nature. Our mtDNA and Y
| chromosome is the hardware our consciousness runs on. Just
| the way we are, not a strong or a weak thing you say, there
| are mutations in us, some are beneficial, some are
| good/bad, but I disagree, of course some are weak or
| objectively bad. Hotwheels from 8chan made a good post
| about how he doesn't like his existence and would support
| euthanasia for people like himself. I doubt anyone would
| want to be born with tay-sachs, and when you say not
| strong/weak you may be using a surviorship bias to say it,
| although most humans are on average quite healthy.
|
| I was originally going to post how I had the opposite
| reaction to an event like this like you, a car crash when I
| lost control in the rain, thinking I was about to die. I
| didn't and I was mostly fine aside from some back pain from
| whiplash. I have aphatasia, do you happen to have it? I
| have a bad memory so I don't think people with it can get
| PTSD, so it is an adaptive mechanism, although I lose a lot
| of richness in thought I suppose I have been through really
| bad things with no problems, had a gun pointed at me,
| demanded my stuff, and I said no, he was confused and
| didn't really know what to do, I left. I didn't really
| think much of it but others thought it was crazy. No PTSD
| either.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Interesting perspective. Thanks for sharing. Enjoyed
| reading your story. Sorry about your memory and
| aphantasia.
|
| > _I have aphantasia, do you happen to have it?_
|
| Nope, I'm completely fine. The only thing is that for
| months afterwards I couldn't head the ball in my weekly
| soccer game, so I had to give it up. I still kick it
| around with my friends, but I can't compete in rec
| because a centre-back has to head the ball, so I don't. I
| was comparatively advantaged in the air, so that sucks,
| but c'est la vie, right?
| taeric wrote:
| To be clear, aphantasia is not a symptom. People are
| "perfectly fine" that have it. We just don't see things
| without our eyes open. If that makes sense. And, I
| believe, most of us have been this way our whole lives.
| EForEndeavour wrote:
| What was that about a 300-pound combat robot?
| YarickR2 wrote:
| Short Circuit movie remake ?
| bregma wrote:
| Remake? Number 5 is alive!
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Got the weight wrong. It was a 220 pound robot for the
| heavyweight class in Robogames. I was driving between my
| university campus and the campus extension in the next town
| when the crash happened.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Wow that is a good reminder to secure my robots when
| driving... a deer jumped out in front of me recently and
| I had to hit the brakes hard. Luckily didn't have my
| robot in the car. As a fellow Robogames competitor I'm
| glad you made it out of that crash!
| kungtotte wrote:
| You should secure _everything_ in your car.
|
| If you crash into something going only 50 kilometres per
| hour, things that are the same weight as your average
| smartphone will have enough force on impact to kill you.
| barrkel wrote:
| In a dead stop, maybe, but a car isn't likely to be
| stopped dead.
|
| I've been told on motorcycle hazard awareness courses
| that if your body hits a solid object at 50 kph, it's 50%
| mortality risk - it's enough deceleration force to
| rupture your aorta. Take something like a sign post to
| the chest and you'll be lucky to survive.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Lots of good memories from Robogames. I had first read
| about it in Servo magazine when I lived on the east coast
| as a kid. My family ended up moving to California when I
| was in high school and I was a regular attendee from that
| point on. I entered robomagellan regularly during college
| (except the one year the university's club entered the
| heavyweight combat robot competition). After college I
| ended up moving to Orange County and didn't attend much.
|
| Sad to see that it ended.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Well for some throwback memories I have some old TechTV
| coverage of Robogames 2005 of my YouTube channel. I'm the
| kid with bleached blonde hair in the video.
|
| https://youtu.be/J2R-TlBomnQ
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| TechTV was amazing.
| ant6n wrote:
| Huh. Fighting robots in car trunks seem to be more common
| than I realized.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Well my robot is an explorer:
|
| https://reboot.love/t/new-cameras-on-rover/
| rtlfe wrote:
| > The 300 lb combat robot in the trunk
|
| Please explain?
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I didn't quite remember the weight properly. It was a 220
| pound robot for the heavyweight class in Robogames. I was
| driving between my university campus and the campus
| extension in the next town when the crash happened.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I think it was the exact weight of the combat robot that
| elicited the curiosity :)
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| It was a university robotics club project, I had mainly
| remembered it was the highest weight class.
|
| I mostly worked on the electronics (my personal main gig
| was robomagellan), the others were more interested in the
| welding. I got it crossed with he superheavies from
| BattleBots.
| [deleted]
| wuunderbar wrote:
| > mechanical failure of my car
|
| That's scary. What was the failure if you don't mind me
| asking?
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Front passenger control arm. Basically the suspension
| collapsed and planted that corner of the car into the road.
| sgt wrote:
| Had the same happen to me when I was younger and drove a
| BMW 525i. It happened in a corner where the car basically
| just spun and did a 360. I managed to limp home as the
| car was sort of drivable still.
| rolph wrote:
| sounds like a scout or a sapper?
| dkn775 wrote:
| This was a great reminder to secure objects and keep them in
| the trunk/boot whenever possible.
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| Yep. I did not use straps of the proper strength and it
| ripped through the back seats (it was in my trunk). I had a
| '06 Saturn Ion and the rear seats could be folded down to
| make more space in the trunk. They were in their normal
| position, but the force of them being hit my the robot
| must've broken the latches.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Unfortunately with the immense popularity of SUVs in the
| US, a lot of people no longer have trunks/boots that are
| isolated from the rest of the cabin.
|
| I was in a 40-mph crash last year with a large old CRT in
| my SUV. It shot forward from the back and crashed into
| the dashboard but if the car had rolled, like yours
| did...who knows
| AriaMinaei wrote:
| Sorry for the traumatic experience.
|
| In case you can get in touch with the operators of the website,
| it could be helpful to let them know that it's common in
| Germany (and likely elsewhere) for people to avoid entering
| their credit card information on most websites due to
| security/privacy concerns. Being able to pay through trusted
| intermediaries (like PayPal) would make it more likely for
| people to make a donation.
| Gerardd wrote:
| Unfortunately PayPal is not supported in Lebanon. We are
| trying to setup a GoFundMe campaign (also not supported)
| through an international intermediary.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Paypal trusted? I can't think of anything less trusted around
| here.
| Waterfall wrote:
| It is mostly trusted. It is not perfect but most people
| have not been screwed by it, it it a zero sum game so
| sometimes they side with one more, usually the buyer. There
| are more buyers than sellers.
| kingkawn wrote:
| This recurrent memory that you can't stop replaying is a
| symptom of PTSD. Of course your work and communal recovery
| cannot stop, but consider getting therapeutic treatment for
| yourself to help mitigate the impact of this event.
| [deleted]
| supernova87a wrote:
| Was your hearing damaged at all from the blast?
| sg47 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing the donation link (I always trust charities
| recommended by locals). I donated a bit.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| An interesting "mundane" fact about this explosion is that it
| destroyed so many windows that there probably isn't enough
| replacement glass in the country to fix all the windows. And
| with the port destroyed they don't know how they're going to
| receive more glass. Not to mention aluminum and other
| materials.
| scott31 wrote:
| It doesn't sound that miraculous tbh
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to
| Hacker News.
| doggydogs94 wrote:
| Hezbollah does a pretty good job of staying out of the line of
| fire; even though I am sure they have helped themselves to some
| of the AN from time to time.
| duxup wrote:
| Who organizes these welders?
|
| Whose job is it to check the site come up with a safe plan where
| / before the welders work?
|
| Maybe the welders should have known better, but there needs to be
| more between total disaster and welding than just some guys with
| welding tools who probably have little power to say no without
| consequences ...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Who organizes these welders?
|
| >Whose job is it to check the site come up with a safe plan
| where / before the welders work?
|
| Nobody does any of that. It's not a rich country. They simply
| can't afford that kind of overhead. Sure the welders could but
| they can't/won't do that if the rest of the economy/society
| normalizes it and normalizing that and the whole economy can't
| afford that. It sucks but that's just how it works. You gotta
| get rich before you can afford to care about worker safety and
| the environment. (Obviously it's not a hard cutoff, as you get
| richer you care more about each).
|
| Imagine the state of workplace safety in the US but in the
| 1950s. That's where they are right now.
| rectang wrote:
| If the conclusion you reach is that welders should be scapegoated
| for blowing up Beirut, then you are either corrupt or cretinous.
|
| The real question is, why were the explosives there?
|
| But pursuing that question might make powerful people
| uncomfortable, or lead to less satisfying conclusions about
| institutions deliberately designed to disperse accountability.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > The real question is, why were the explosives there?
|
| In a highly structured and rule driven entity (government) what
| happens when a problem falls outside the set up structure?
|
| It tends to be ignored as nobody is responsible for dealing
| with it.
| rectang wrote:
| I've read numerous articles and although it seems lots of
| people knew the situation was dangerous and lots of letters
| flew back and forth, I'm _still_ not clear on who had
| jurisdiction or failed to take action. The Port Authority?
| The courts? The Army? The General Directorate of State
| Security?
|
| This Reuters article is maddening, but it hits much closer to
| the truth than all the pointless "welding is dangerous"
| threads going on right now around us:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-
| do...
|
| The hypothesis I tend to reach for is a general lack of "good
| government", originating because the factional tension in
| Lebanon completely overshadows any other political
| differentiation. The factions can't compete on competence
| because votes are locked in by group identity.
| Sharlin wrote:
| > I've read numerous articles and although it seems lots of
| people knew the situation was dangerous and lots of letters
| flew back and forth, I'm still not clear on who had
| jurisdiction or failed to take action.
|
| That's exactly the problem. They weren't either.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| In an advanced country with a modern legal system, like,
| say, Australia, the answer to your question is:
|
| Every single person who knew the dangers is personally
| liable for up to $50,000 for an individual, if I recall
| correctly.
|
| And for industrial manslaughter the maximum penalty is 20
| years jail and AU$10 million for a business operator:
|
| https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/workplace/business-
| fine...
| Dahoon wrote:
| A modern legal system and an advanced country doesn't
| have or allow concentration style camps for immigrants or
| do its best to ruin the lives and rights of the original
| people. That rules out Australia.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| And the United States also, by that metric...
| ninth_ant wrote:
| > In a highly structured and rule driven entity (government)
| what happens when a problem falls outside the set up
| structure? It tends to be ignored as nobody is responsible
| for dealing with it.
|
| This class of problem isn't unique to governments. Modern
| society has a whole host of problems that are caused by
| externalities generated by corporations.
| rectang wrote:
| The common thread is that in both cases, those entities and
| individuals closest to the problem have strong incentives
| to do nothing (prevention is a thankless, costly task), and
| so it falls to the general populace to create incentives to
| hold them accountable.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| And you will be blamed for imperfect prevention. Say that
| the army spent $20,000 moving the fertilizer to a
| disposal site. Would someone get in trouble for that?
| Yep.
| lb1lf wrote:
| -This is not meant as a witticism, but suggesting the
| Lebanese government is 'highly structured and rule driven' is
| giving it way too much credit.
|
| Cynical me find the explanation that AN fertiliser simply is
| too cheap more likely - it simply wasn't worth the effort to
| -ahem- reallocate the resources from the warehouse it was
| stored in.
| antris wrote:
| Highly structured and rule driven practices are key to _all_
| safety. Hospitals, military, airlines all depend on a rigid
| set of safety instructions that are followed without
| exceptions.
|
| Same goes for explosives. Many governments around the world
| set various different rules around storage of explosives, and
| the Beirut port explosion was a result of ignoring pretty
| much all of them. It's an example of what happens when the
| government isn't there to do its job.
| gwern wrote:
| > early this year they had learned that one of the warehouse's
| doors was broken, raising the risk that a malicious actor could
| steal dangerous explosives. The port's welding contractors set
| off the cache while trying to repair the door to protect the
| cache.
|
| I'm reminded of a maxim I heard somewhere about failures in
| complex systems: "the mechanisms you add to prevent failures
| are themselves a major cause of failure".
| FatalLogic wrote:
| >... "the mechanisms you add to prevent failures are
| themselves a major cause of failure".
|
| When those failure-prevention mechanisms are bolt-on
| solutions that make a complex system even more complex,
| perhaps that's not surprising.
|
| In this case, for example, the complex system needed to be
| simplified, by removing the explosives. But instead it was
| made more complex.
| atoav wrote:
| To be honest it doesn't even have to be that high level.
| Corruption can stack: you bribe the guy at the customs so it is
| declared as sth else for example -- suddenly the AM you are
| storing is mountain dew. Or you bribe some other clerk to not
| file it in a certain category. Suddenly it is not dangerous.
|
| You could even imagine a chain of corruption (=paid lies) to
| lead to such an outcome. Assuming the on-paper representation
| of a world a corrupt society produces is accurate enough to
| base meaningful decisions on them is very optimistic at least.
|
| What was extraordinary was the scale of the blast and the human
| tragedy it produced. But the fact _that_ it happened wasn 't
| very surprising to anyone who knows a bit about the Lebanon.
| hinkley wrote:
| I was watching some Feynman interview recently and he was
| talking about how one day noodling with a geiger counter he
| found a hot spot in an storage room, and discovered that the
| operations people were storing uranium in suspension, and
| either the ratio was wrong, or the tanks were too big, and so
| the neutron flux was too high.
|
| Since the nuclear physics was all highly classified, they
| couldn't just explain the entire situation directly, but he
| played up the severity to make sure people paid attention
| (because the next mistake would be much worse).
|
| They reworked the guidelines, and as part of this they also
| had to point out that storing two tanks of uranium in
| separate rooms but on the same wall was also a really
| exceptionally bad idea.
|
| If you _can_ tell people what 's going on, there is plenty of
| room for human error. If you _can 't_ tell them, for any
| reasons ranging from graft to state secrets, well then you've
| got a much bigger surface area for disasters.
| draw_down wrote:
| I agree but I think it's ok to acknowledge the proximate cause
| while remembering the ultimate cause. You can say it was caused
| by the welders without them being to blame for it. Imagine they
| weren't told about the explosives, it still would be the case
| they caused the blast but not really possible for them to be at
| fault.
| mabbo wrote:
| > Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks,
| which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache.
|
| That sentence is nearly unbelievable, like something from a
| cartoon show. How much incompetence can you layer upon further
| incompetence to reach this insane level of danger?
| d33lio wrote:
| And yet we wonder why these people still can't feed
| themselves...
| jeanvaljean2463 wrote:
| Clearly you've never been in or worked in gov organizations.
| It's far more common than you think and easy to think, "it
| can't possibly happen here or to me."
|
| In the U.S. institutions like OSHA, USCSB, NTSB, and the FAA
| are vilified, but the rules they enforce have been written with
| blood.
| cryptonector wrote:
| And the thought occurs that those might have been Hezbollah
| rockets rather than fireworks. Is there a culture of setting
| off fireworks in Beirut in particular, or Lebanon in general?
| cm2187 wrote:
| I had the same thought. A scene from the Simpsons.
| devwastaken wrote:
| The CSB has a number of YouTube videos detailing how industrial
| accidents happen, and it's almost always flame, sparks, gasses,
| corrosion, and a fuel source.
|
| Nobody is going to get paid for being safe, few care about
| learning it,fewer are going to get paid teaching it, and few
| are going to be listened to.
|
| The "safe guy" is going to be the butt end of the jobs because
| they cost more, get it done slower, and aren't going to work on
| unsafe places. It's all about get it done and if someone dies
| that's the cost of doing business and that's on the worker.
| bootlooped wrote:
| I worked in a factory where some other employees seemed to
| view safety as something that is in direct opposition to
| masculinity. So that's another factor that contributes to it.
| csours wrote:
| A few selected videos to this point:
|
| Fireworks Disposal
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rktMzw2fd28
|
| City of West, TX fertilizer explosion
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDuHxwD5R4
|
| Hot Work
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWkcuR0adeI
| frickinLasers wrote:
| I think OP was referring to "fireworks stored next to
| ammonium nitrate." Fireworks are stupidly hazardous and
| should _never_ be stored around high explosives. If the
| sparks had hit only the ammonium nitrate (because the
| fireworks had been properly disposed of or at least stored in
| a reasonable configuration), there 's a good chance the fire
| would not have started.
| DC-3 wrote:
| The first frame of that 1st video when the explosion hits is
| morbidly fascinating. The image looks almost as if it is pieced
| together from torn paper.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/1GkJgxt.png
| [deleted]
| gnulinux wrote:
| Is this because shock wave compresses air and makes it
| refractive like water so it almost looks like there is a water
| droplet where the explosion originates?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes. The air density changes rapidly depending on whether or
| not that slice of air was in the shadow of a building
| lengthening the path and attenuating the pressure change and
| it's rate of change.
| DC-3 wrote:
| That feels plausible. I think the effect of shock on the
| camera sensor also plays a part.
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Seems like a combination of that and what seems like some
| algorithm performing temporal denoising on the video going
| haywire from the quick moving picture.
| _ph_ wrote:
| This looks like an early frame, a couple of seconds before
| the shock wave reaches the camera. That is why there are so
| many clear videos, as it takes a while for the shock wave
| to reach the observers - if you are 3 kilometers away, you
| have 10 seconds to watch the explosion, before it hits you.
|
| Camera sensors should also not generate artifacts due to
| shock, unless they fail. But what is possible, that very
| fast moving subjects create artifacts in the image due to
| the limited shutter speed.
| Gerardd wrote:
| This is a good article about the physics of the explosion:
| https://www.wired.com/story/tragic-physics-deadly-explosion-...
| sradman wrote:
| I noted the maintenance connection in a CNN article about a week
| ago on HN [1]. This "report" seems to skip the fire stage and the
| reports that fire fighters were on site and noted the oddity of
| the fire.
|
| > Maintenance was conducted on the warehouse door just hours
| before the blast on Tuesday, he added.
|
| This looks like a key piece of evidence. Warehouse door
| maintenance could have caused the fire seen at the start of the
| videos of the incident.
|
| Until more evidence is revealed I think "warehouse with 2750 tons
| of ammonium nitrate caught fire" is a good hypothesis.
|
| Coulda, shoulda, and speculating about motivations can come
| later.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24069640
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> a supply of fireworks, which had been stored next to the
| ammonium nitrate cache._
|
| Wow.
| techsin101 wrote:
| welding next to fireworks which is next to ammonium
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| I don't understand why they'd store a cache of fireworks next to
| a cache of ammonium nitrate. And what kind of rent-a-welder
| wouldn't be aware enough of their surroundings and the associated
| risks that they wouldn't properly secure the perimeter from
| sparks?
|
| I'm not the conspiratorial type, but it really does seem like
| there's some other information that we're not getting.
| danesparza wrote:
| _And what kind of rent-a-welder wouldn 't be aware enough of
| their surroundings and the associated risks that they wouldn't
| properly secure the perimeter from sparks?_
|
| One that's trying to eat. Lebanon was already having economic
| problems:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/10/world/middleeast/lebanon-...
|
| I'm willing to bet the poor welders didn't even know about the
| fireworks and ammonium nitrate and probably didn't think to
| ask. The guys that hired them problem did, though.
| roywiggins wrote:
| According to the link, the welders were Syrian workers. So
| they might well have been an even more precarious position
| than your average Lebanese citizen.
| bserge wrote:
| Basically, incompetence. Happens everywhere, but especially in
| places where people just don't care much about anything (I am
| from such a country).
|
| People who stored the fireworks didn't know about the ammonium
| nitrate, not their problem.
|
| Welders didn't know _anything_. They just came to do their job.
|
| Safety standards are just not a thing in many places. It's even
| considered a joke among many workers - you gotta work fast, not
| care about your ears/hands/eyes/cars/surroundings etc. It's
| sad.
|
| People managing the warehouse also didn't know about what's
| going on, and likely didn't care enough to find out.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "People did something dumb" hardly requires a conspiracy.
| vmception wrote:
| That's pretty much the prerequisite to all conspiracies:
| attributing to malice that which is adequately explained by
| incompetence.
| datameta wrote:
| As the saying goes: Don't attritubute to malice that which
| could easily be attributed to stupidity
| danesparza wrote:
| Also known as "Hanlon's razor" :-)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor
| Animats wrote:
| Huge ammonium nitrate explosions have happened too many times
| before.[1] Last big one in the US was in 2015 in Texas.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_di
| sas...
| wutbrodo wrote:
| Beirut's government is notoriously dysfunctional and
| incompetent at the basic tasks of governance. When I was there
| some years back, there were huge protests precipitated by this
| incompetence, and that was half a decade ago. People tend to
| underestimate how much institutional capital is involved in
| basic governmental tasks running smoothly, even in a country as
| politically polarized and dysfunctional as, say, the US. It's
| very plausible to me that this was just a result of that
| incompetence.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I agree. Most likely it was plain incompetence or lack of
| care. Judging from the handling of COVID it seems the US is
| determined to catch up to Beirut in making everything a
| political issue and destroying the institutions that make
| everyday life work smoothly.
| Aeolun wrote:
| This requires incompetence all the way up and down the line
| though. From the welders to the president.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| That's pretty common. Once people see other people getting
| away with or even being rewarded for incompetence or
| unethical behavior they will also wonder why should go
| through the trouble of doing their job properly. I have
| seen that in companies too. Once you see a team taking
| shortcuts at the expense of quality and being rewarded for
| their speed other teams will follow soon.
| forinti wrote:
| Great catastrophes require the collaboration of lots of
| people.
| wutbrodo wrote:
| The thing is, the modern economy is such a complex marvel
| that "incompetence" is the default state. I certainly
| couldn't put on welding gear and be a competent welder
| tomorrow, and there's an entire spectrum of competence and
| ability to fake competence between me and a master welder.
| It's extremely non-trivial for a large organization to push
| competency down to the lowest levels of the org tree, and
| that goes doubly for large organizations like governments
| with loose accountability feedback loops.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Considering the state of Lebanon _before_ this, total
| incompetence would not come as any sort of surprise.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The most important thing I learned from studying
| engineering ethics/failure analysis is that most major
| failures are caused by an accumulation of tiny failures (of
| both process and material) that, while not individually
| disastrous, collaborate to cause enormous damage. The
| "academic" engineering failures (Challenger explosion,
| Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Therac-25) all had that in common,
| as did the 747-MAX issue and this.
| ghastmaster wrote:
| The same logic holds true for gun safety. A person
| usually has to make two mistakes in order to have a
| negligent discharge. For example if you fail to engage
| the safety and then pull the trigger accidentally, you
| made two mistakes.
| boilerupnc wrote:
| Not just limited to engineering, you also just described
| one hypothesis for the manifestation of biological
| cancers through systems biology. "Most solid tumors arise
| from a spectrum of genetic, epigenetic, and chromosomal
| alterations. [...] molecular alterations can be
| classified by dysfunction in as many as six different
| regulatory systems that must be perturbed for a normal
| cell to become cancerous [...] The mere recognition of
| cancer as a systems biology disease is a key first step.
| This hypothesis views the individual defects observable
| in solid tumors cumulatively as system failures either at
| the cellular or multicellular level." [0]
|
| [0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2666950/
|
| [1] http://news.mit.edu/2017/cells-combat-chromosome-
| imbalance-0...
| H8crilA wrote:
| _How Complex Systems Fail_
|
| https://how.complexsystems.fail/
| Jtsummers wrote:
| _Engineering a Safer World_ by Leveson [0], as well. Goes
| into great detail about these ideas, how to model them,
| and how to build safety into systems deliberately rather
| than as an afterthought.
|
| [0] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/engineering-safer-
| world
| DetroitThrow wrote:
| I wish engineering education paid dues to _engineering
| processes_ that cause situations like you listed above. I
| wonder what kind of process failure happened in Lebanon.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| As far as I know, ABET still requires an Engineering
| Ethics course (that will certainly cover the canonical
| examples) for their accreditation. That's a good start
| (it's certainly where I got my start in thinking about
| those issues).
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Why did a ship headed for Mozambique detour to Lebanon in the
| first place?
| jeffbee wrote:
| It was broken.
|
| That's the real problem here is that many states are
| defenseless against the actions of private entities. What
| would your local authority do if some russians just abandoned
| three thousand tons of fertilizer in your harbor?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| And Egypt doesn't have repair facilities?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| _Mine_?
|
| They'd use a local hazardous waste disposal company and
| bill the ship owners the cost of the disposal.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >bill the ship owners the cost of the disposal
|
| Would you like to know how I know you have no idea of
| what occurred up to this point?
|
| The captain and shiphands were arrested and put in jail.
| They were eventually released because the Russian owner
| of this ship abandoned them and had little to do with the
| actual problem that was occurring.
|
| They were never going to get any money from the owner.
|
| At this point they should have auctioned off the material
| to recuperate costs. No need for hazardous waste
| disposal, it is a useful economic product. Instead it was
| stored for six years, this was totally on the local
| government.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| Such a waste of a windfall. They confiscated a valuable
| farming additive that could have boosted domestic
| harvests for several (many?) years. It was dangerous to
| store so why not sell it to local farmers at cost
| (virtually nothing) and get it into the ground? Instead
| of a food shortage they could be enjoying a food
| _surplus_.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Congratulations, you have the privilege of living in a
| functional society. Many people do not.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| You're obviously lucky enough to live in a country whose
| military is powerful enough and whose economy is large
| enough that they can enforce those bills (i.e. the ship
| owners would mind never doing business with you again).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >What would your local authority do if some russians just
| abandoned three thousand tons of fertilizer in your harbor?
|
| Milk it in the news for maximum virtue signaling then
| dispose of it in the least economically efficient way
| possible with the inefficiency being directed at the bank
| accounts of those politically connected.
|
| I assume that a government that can't rely on the letter in
| brackets beside their name to get them reelected might do
| things differently.
| [deleted]
| atoav wrote:
| Why didn't it? Did you check the other 364 days of the year
| for ships doing detours? If not, why do you assume it isn't a
| perfectly normal thing?
| glenstein wrote:
| This is very important to remember. I think there's a
| tendency when these events happen, to pull out
| circumstantial details without realizing how routine they
| may actually be, and treat them like they 'add up' to a
| b-movie narrative. Hopefully one of many lessons to come
| from this is for people to have discipline not to transform
| it into a conspiracy.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| The only odd thing I've seen is a video from late July of a car
| or something on fire in Beirut allegedly from an Israeli
| missile.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Yakungkjc
| maximente wrote:
| Hanlon's razor seems rather appropriate here
| atoav wrote:
| I don't think one needs mich fantasy to imagine how a corrupt
| government in a country with corruption on every level oft the
| society gets something horribly wrong.
|
| Corruption means you pay someone to bend the rules, to write
| down things wrongly, to actually honour the rules they are
| bending constantly etc.
|
| So if you assume that in both cases (fireworks + ammonium
| nitrate) corruption was involved to bend the rules, maybe
| nobody really knew this was actually the case? Totally
| feasible.
|
| Not to speak badly about Lebanese welders, but have you ever
| been to a middle eastern nation and seen how they do work
| safety? It is a wonder that such things don't happen a little
| more often.
| nwallin wrote:
| > Not to speak badly about Lebanese welders,
|
| The article states that the welders were Syrian. I am
| guessing they are refugees just trying to get by. Even
| assuming they were well trained and safety minded, it's
| reasonable to assume they did not have the power to tell
| their bosses, "this is unsafe so we're not gonna do it."
|
| I am not going to reject outright the possibility of some
| nefarious plot, but corruption and bureaucratic incompetence
| explain all of the facts perfectly.
| yodon wrote:
| There is no need to hunt for a conspiracy theory. Once the
| decision was made by their judiciary to store thousands of tons
| of explosives near a major population center, the important
| question ceases to be about what random unexpected event
| happens to be the one that sets it off. The probability of
| disaster was clearly going to integrate to one over some
| timescale. The failure was systemic. The tragedy was
| inevitable. It's actually kind of amazing it took this long to
| happen.
| patrickas wrote:
| There is no indication that it was "the judiciary's decision"
| to store it "near a major population center".
|
| That's a story floated by the head of customs to try and
| shift the blame to the judiciary. But there is no evidence
| for it, and there is much evidence against it.
|
| Source: The court documents released by journalists Riad
| Kobeisyi and Dima Sadek.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I think the storage was one of convenience. Ship was at the
| docks, so store it at the docks. Who would have thought it
| would have taken 6 years? The next problem is this 2750
| _tons_ of material. You 're talking around 70 semi loads to
| carry it all off. This has to be funded by someone, who?
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I mean, at the bare minumum someone must have been
| willing to take this stuff off the states hands at least
| for free, right? A Google search says 500$ a ton for it
| manquer wrote:
| Very few people need explosive grade ammonium nitrate in
| this quantity and also prefer a source that has no
| provenance, and pay some fraction of 1.3 Million list
| price over their established supply chain.
| dmix wrote:
| I'm sure they could have destroyed the fireworks and sold
| the fertilizer to some farmers if they really wanted to.
| That would quickly pay for itself.
| KONAir wrote:
| I still can't wrap my head around this, even if you can't
| sell it you can still find ways to get rid of both.
| wiz21c wrote:
| spot on.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Honestly stop at "I don't understand"
|
| There is not one thing that went right here. Every single thing
| you could do wrong was done.
|
| AN should _never_ be stored for long periods of time.
|
| AN should _never_ be stored near organics, flammables, or any
| heat generating item.
|
| AN should _never_ be stored in urban /residential areas.
|
| AN should be stored in secured environments and in the smaller
| amounts separated by distance or berms to protect against a
| incidence causing the entire cache going up.
|
| These idiots were criminally negligent on a scale rarely seen.
| nullc wrote:
| It would add a lot of force to your comment and its
| conclusion if you could cite a webpage making similar
| concrete recommendations from prior to this incident.
|
| [I'm not doubting it exists-- I mean the above sincerely.
| Your point would be a lot more forceful if you showed it
| wasn't hindsight bias.]
| h2odragon wrote:
| https://www.osha.gov/laws-
| regs/standardinterpretations/2014-...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| https://www.atf.gov/explosives/table-distances
|
| That is an example of the kind of tables that exist that
| show what can be stored with and near what, and how much.
| Storing of explosives is well understood. They try these
| explosives in various quantities, near each other, with
| different heat and other effects applied. Through these
| experiments and through real-world accidents and
| catastrophes they know what shouldn't be done. What
| happened here was an example of what shouldn't be done.
| ufmace wrote:
| This stuff is all pretty common sense. Since when do you
| need a "webpage making concrete recommendations" to know
| that storing thousands of tons of explosives in a single
| place in major city is a disaster waiting to happen?
| eximius wrote:
| I do not mean to denigrate the skill of workers in other
| countries, but being less regulated / process oriented has its
| downsides in that you can have a higher variance in skill
| level. Beirut is not undeveloped, but even developed countries
| sometimes do things in sketchy, hazardous ways.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > I don't understand why they'd store a cache of fireworks next
| to a cache of ammonium nitrate.
|
| You assume a decision was actively made. I think it was more
| that they ended up there after being seized and then nobody
| made any decisions after that.
| afterburner wrote:
| Seems like a decision was made, repeatedly, to do nothing
| about it, while knowing it was an issue.
|
| https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/hezbollah-
| denies-...
|
| > Former port worker Yusuf Shehadi confirmed this account to
| The Guardian on Thurday. In his recollection, "30-40 nylon
| bags of fireworks" had been stored in the same warehouse as
| the cargo of ammonium nitrate for many years. Port workers
| and customs officials were well aware that both of these
| consignments were on site and potentially dangerous, and they
| had raised the issue multiple times, he said. "Every week,
| the customs people came and complained and so did the state
| security officers. The army kept telling them they had no
| other place to put this. Everyone wanted to be the boss, and
| no one wanted to make a real decision," Shehadi said.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| In retrospect they should've sold the AN to farmers and
| then fought over who gets the money.
| dunmalg wrote:
| Some theorize that the ammonium nitrate was already being
| sold off bit by bit on he black market as the harder to
| procure half of ANFO, and for a lot more than farmers
| would be willing to pay. Even carting off 500kg a week,
| after 4 years when 2750 tons turned into 2650, would
| anyone notice?
| [deleted]
| davidgerard wrote:
| Reblog of original Reuters article from three days ago:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-do...
| majormunky wrote:
| "Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks,
| which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache."
|
| Huh..
| TwoBit wrote:
| > "May God protect Lebanon"
|
| Well there's your problem mr. government official. You thought
| God was going to do your job for you.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| umvi wrote:
| Seems like hot work causes lots of accidents.
|
| https://youtu.be/zWkcuR0adeI
| myself248 wrote:
| I would say, hot work reveals unsafe situations.
|
| Unsafe situations cause lots of accidents.
| dboreham wrote:
| Right up there with "checking if there's a gas leak with a
| candle".
| myself248 wrote:
| There once was a gas-man named Peter
|
| On a dark night, asearch for the meter
|
| Touched a leak with his light
|
| He arose out of sight
|
| And as anyone can tell by reading this, he also completely
| destroyed the meter.
| throw7 wrote:
| "I am not responsible!"
|
| I'm hearing this a lot from multiple so called "leaders".
| formalsystem wrote:
| Lebanese here
|
| Focusing on the direct cause of the blast is a huge distraction
| from understanding why the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate were
| stored in the middle of Beirut for 7 years.
|
| The president Aoun and his senior leadership were all aware of
| this problem but said they didn't have the authority to do
| anything about it. IMO, this is a hilariously bad argument that's
| deflecting who the most likely owner is. Aoun and his lackeys
| apparently have the authority to start a state of emergency and
| shoot protesters but don't have any such authority to prevent
| half of Beirut from being nuked.
|
| The director of the Beirut port Badri Daher has been running
| bazaar ever since he's been in that position, regularly stealing
| supplies from shipments, suing reporters for defamation and
| beating up investigative journalists. The port director also
| reports to the Amal party which is closely allied to Aouns.
| rbanffy wrote:
| 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate stored in the same building,
| next to a cache of fireworks, mind you. Corruption plays a
| part, but I'm astonished by the incompetence that's usually
| going hand in hand with the corruption. I'm surprised a
| catastrophe took 7 years to happen. You simply do not store
| that much fertilizer in a single place.
|
| And Brazil (Brazilian here) sent a diplomatic mission to help.
| It's lead by our very own Badri Daher, the previous vice
| president who threw a coup against the previous president.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Perhaps an interesting datapoint from a Western government, a
| similar disaster happened in The Netherlands in the year
| 2000. 177 tones of firework were stored in a single building
| in the middle of a residential area.
|
| The results were pretty much what you'd expect.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enschede_fireworks_disaster
| [deleted]
| LolSquad wrote:
| LOL sending Brazilians into this, Brazilians are like animals
| in the projected modern world; it's like sending a dinosaur
| into a gunfight. "Brazilian diplomats" give us a fucking
| break. Brazilians are fucking baboons not even human like.
| Fuck off with your fucking dego shit. South Americans are
| trash, in every respect. Fucking trashcans. Shit people.
| p_l wrote:
| A lot of western explosions of ammonium nitrate start with
| "they decided to use explosives to dislodge when it
| froze/caked in a tank"...
| jacobush wrote:
| That sounds insane. So probably true I guess? Still,
| sources would be nice!
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| > _You simply do not store that much fertilizer in a single
| place_
|
| Perhaps it is done, and in a port near you.
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/national/lebanon-blast-alarms-nsw-
| res...
|
| > _Kooragang Island is already home to a storage facility
| operated by chemical giant Orica, where up to 12,000 tonnes
| of ammonium nitrate are stored and around 430,000 tonnes
| produced each year_
|
| IIRC Orica is the same company that made that stuff that was
| stored on docks of Beirut.
| bregma wrote:
| > Corruption plays a part, but I'm astonished by the
| incompetence that's usually going hand in hand
|
| One of the main reasons corruption is highly undesirable is
| because it allows the sequelae of incompetence to fester
| until they blow. In this case, quite literally.
| jackfoxy wrote:
| At least in English corruption means a lot more than just
| bribes. https://www.wordnik.com/words/corruption
|
| When an organization, government, society is corrupt it is
| rotten, polluted, depraved. Lots of things are wrong that
| have nothing to do with bad money exchanging hands.
| AgloeDreams wrote:
| To be corrupt and make corrupt choices you need to ensure
| that the underlings don't catch you, so you hire the most
| incompetent, scared, needy, yes-men possible. It limits the
| ability of your organization to be effective overall but
| enables you to have complete power. Corruption tends to go
| with lack of ability by design.
|
| E.g. the Trump Administrations high turnover rate.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I got a buddy who was an explosives expert from the Marines.
| He tells me that it is safe to store a bunch of explosives in
| one spot, but only if you carefully measure the distance and
| distribute them appropriately.
|
| The general idea is that if a warehouse containing 2500+ tons
| of explosives catches on fire... then you have 5000x
| explosions, each 1000lbs.
|
| That's pretty bad of course, but not nearly as bad as all
| 5,000,000 lbs exploding at the same time.
|
| -------
|
| So the error was primarily in the way they stored the
| explosives. They didn't have any explosive expert run the
| calculations or think of safety issues.
|
| The military has to store tons of explosives all together. Be
| it in ships, bombs, C4, or other truly frightening explosives
| (and ammonia nitrate isn't a military grade explosive: the
| stuff the military uses is much, much more dangerous).
| Keeping that safe even in the presence of fires and errors is
| possible, but only with the proper training and procedures.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Incompetence and corruption are often hand-in-hand. Corrupt
| governance often results in the appointment of (or support of
| in a corrupt-but-more-capitalist environment) sycophants who
| don't know anything about the thing they're in charge of.
| This leads to a degradation in the culture within whatever
| organization they're leading.
|
| At first it's small, experienced engineers or safety officers
| and the like will start leaving. But there's enough left. But
| then the money for maintenance and training diminishes over
| time, likely to someone's private bank account. After even
| just a few short years of this you'll have an incompetent
| organization.
|
| I've seen this play out, not just in governments, but in
| private enterprises as well. When you see a division's
| quality dropping, look to the top and see what they're doing
| and emphasizing and how they got that position.
| mvn9 wrote:
| Where do all the competent people end up? Do the competent
| people find equally challenging positions or is their
| potential wasted?
| manquer wrote:
| Competence is as much state as fitness is, i.e. people
| loose it if their job does not allow them to be competent
| and they are unable to switch.
|
| I have seen really competent people become incompetent
| overtime in soul crushing paper pushing jobs. You work
| long enough in a such job, you become the _exact_ kind of
| person you despised when you started.
|
| It is especially acute in governmental jobs which have
| lesser scope for role changes etc.
| jhvhvuyv wrote:
| In case where corruption and nepotism are wide spread in
| a society, only thing competent people can do is leave
| the society or country.
|
| In my opinion, nepotism is bigger problem than corruption
| in the middle east. A lot of these corrupt deals happen
| through family connections. And then you go to private
| industry, and you will find that all the higher up people
| are usually related to each other.
|
| So most of the ambitious people leave for the west
| causing further damage to society with brain drain.
| znpy wrote:
| Wasted.
|
| Competent people are worth a salary, they typically end
| up working somewhere else or go abroad completely.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| If they stay, most likely wasted. Or they succeed despite
| the organization, but ultimately fight an uphill battle
| the entire time. It's usually best to just leave, but
| that also creates a vacuum that will be filled with an
| incompetent (or subpar) yes-man further exacerbating the
| problem.
|
| That can create conflict for civil service employees. To
| stay where you're not _that_ useful and feel it 's a
| waste, but you're doing _some_ good by shouting into the
| storm and trying to hold back the stupidity. Or to leave
| and let an incompetent person take over behind you (or
| competent but overworked because they don 't fill the
| position). If you stay in that situation it's out of a
| sense of duty, but it's incredibly exhausting.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| What you said feels so "obvious" but really it's profound.
|
| Corruption and Incompetence DO go hand in hand! And where
| there is one, you're likely to find the other. Damn it
| would make an awesome area of study for a sociologist!
|
| In my career in both big companies and startups, I feel
| like I've been exposed to so many mysteriously incompetent
| departments and executives, only to find later that there
| was an explanation that I consider corruption.
|
| Of course, thats not to say it's illegal. It's usually
| perfectly legal behavior that optimizes for personal gain
| rather than the outcome you'd expect from the person or
| department's title.
|
| And that brings us to a point that has been bothering me
| for a while- When we look at those global 'corruption
| index' infographics and stuff, they must be measuring the
| _Illegal Corruption_ in a country, right? Like when a
| bureaucrat demands a bribe.
|
| How could anything measure Legal Corruption? Like when an
| executive hires friends who are less competent than
| whatever the 'regular' hiring process would produce? Or
| when lobbyists get legislators to pass regulations that
| materially favor their business, stuff like that.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| You piqued my curiosity with your comment, I'm trying to
| find what research is out there. I've found some articles
| behind paywalls (I may dig further later to find non-
| paywalled versions, I'm not dropping $44 for a paper,
| especially one on the periphery of my interests) in
| public policy research about these issues, which makes
| sense.
|
| Not research, but where it was driven home for me was
| Venezuela and their oil and energy sector. A major
| economic concern (before the drop in oil prices) was the
| drop in oil production rates, which was due, largely, to
| a reduction in proper maintenance after Chavez (still
| alive at the time I was reading about this particular
| issue) had nationalized companies and appointed non-
| experts into leadership positions.
|
| But it's not just them, that was just a particularly well
| publicized case. While many people probably believe
| (rightly) that the US federal government is corrupted and
| incompetent, a lot more corruption (and incompetence)
| lies at the local and state levels. Probably due to the
| reduced scrutiny they suffer.
| BeatLeJuce wrote:
| Sci-hub usually helps you get around paywalled research
| articles. Otherwise, maybe just drop the links you found
| here for posterity's sake?
| munificent wrote:
| _> Corruption and Incompetence DO go hand in hand!_
|
| Yes! There is a simpler reason to in addition to what the
| parent comment says. Corruption requires removing
| accountability. When you remove it for moral reasons, you
| often lose accountability for _all_ reasons in the
| process. If the act is done in the dark, not only can no
| one see if you 're doing the right job (morally), they
| also can't see if you're doing job right (effectively).
|
| _> How could anything measure Legal Corruption?_
|
| One metric I know that I think hints at this is "time to
| open a business": https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC
| .REG.DURS?most_recent...
|
| That's a good proxy for how much corruption--legal or not
| --you have to navigate to get something done.
| jrobn wrote:
| This sounds like where the US is heading. Corrupt. Greed. Lack
| of civil service, empathy, and duty. People have a right to be
| angry. They have a right to demand to fix the problems that
| lead to their loved ones exploding on a otherwise peaceful
| afternoon.
| nomel wrote:
| I have a question that only a Lebanese could probably answer.
|
| From the article: > the port sent a team of Syrian workers to
| fix the warehouse.
|
| What's the purpose of mentioning that they're Syrian?
| tyingq wrote:
| _" Unskilled laborers"_ would have been a better turn of
| phrase.
|
| Not to imply Syrians are generally so, but just probably so
| in this case given recent events and war refugee movements,
| unverifiable credentials, and available jobs, etc.
| kamel3d wrote:
| I am not Lebanese but I am aware of all conflicts going in
| the region, Lebanon had the second largest number of Syrian
| refugees after Turkey and many of them are used there as
| cheap labour, so that also could go with what was mentioned
| earlier of corruption go hand in hand with incompetence, so
| getting a cheap labour to fix the door would mean very likely
| these people were not trained in handling or working in near
| proximity of dangerous chemicals, I think mentioning that
| they were Syrians would clarify the point, rather then
| accusing them of being the cause of the accident
| thinkloop wrote:
| Probably because Syrians are considered cheap low quality
| labor (due to their desperation from having a decade long
| civil war), so it's kind'of like the US picking up laborers
| from Home Depot and letting them figure out how to clean the
| Nukes.
| zvikara wrote:
| Probably the contractor doing the job was using low paid
| incompetent Syrian refugees as workers.
| dynamitehack wrote:
| I find it hilarious you don't think this was "stored" there for
| this very moment. It's your 9/11. Time to start thinking
| broader about DEW, the tunnels that were underneath the
| compound, and purposeful endangerment for the purpose of
| sacrifice.
| rdxm wrote:
| why do you think Hamas would allow 2700 tons of IED precursor
| to leave Beirut???
| debt wrote:
| This was my first thought exactly. A welder's sparks is how it
| happened, but not why it happened.
|
| Why was 2700 lbs of ammonium nitrate stored there? Why for so
| long? Why was that ship offered to dock their originally? Why
| was the door broken requiring welding? Why were fireworks
| stored right near ammonium nitrate? Why were fireworks stored
| there at all regardless of the ammonium nitrate? Why didn't the
| longshoreman unload it from the ship?
| chimprich wrote:
| > Why were fireworks stored right near ammonium nitrate?
|
| Just a guess, but for filing purposes?
|
| You can imagine thought processes along the lines of deciding
| to store it in warehouse X because all the dangerous
| explosive stuff goes there.
|
| You can also imagine that it would be convenient to have all
| the dangerous stuff in one place where it could be monitored
| easily and have extra security.
|
| It would be superficially logical.
| rectang wrote:
| Even if that's the case, it is rendered irrelevant by the
| fact that many people knew about the dangerous situation
| for years and it was heavily discussed over many official
| communiques. It's not like every time one of those
| conversations happened, they were resolved with "Oh, it's
| OK because the flammable stuff all gets filed together."
|
| If we want to learn from this tragedy, what we really need
| to understand is, when the dangerous situation was so well
| known, why was nothing done?
|
| The answer appears to be a combination of unclear spheres
| of accountability and lack of incentives.
|
| We accept that sometimes, commercial actors will behave in
| wildly antisocial ways -- such as the shipping company who
| owned the rotting, explosive-laden MV Rhosus abandoning it
| in Beirut harbor. We rely on government to protect us from
| such dangers -- but sometimes it doesn't. Why?
| fossuser wrote:
| There are some answers for this:
| https://www.axios.com/beirut-ammonium-nitrate-
| explained-61a0...
|
| Short Summary:
|
| - Russian ship with engine trouble made emergency stop years
| ago.
|
| - Ship was carrying all of that ammonium nitrate with bad
| papers (probably illegal transport).
|
| - Ship wasn't allowed to leave (since they're probably moving
| explosive material illegally).
|
| - Eventually crew was let go and Beirut stored the ammonium
| nitrate in the warehouse at the dock.
|
| - People at the dock begged for it to be moved saying that it
| would 'blow up all of Beirut'.
|
| - Government probably didn't know what to do with it.
| rorykoehler wrote:
| >Government probably didn't know what to do with it.
|
| Move it to somewhere remote? Anywhere but in Beirut would
| have been better.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| This is government, you can't just "move it somewhere".
| You have to have a budget, get permitting, put out an rfq
| for the moving and storing of explosive materials, deal
| with lawsuits around the contact and the nimbys who don't
| want explosives stored near them. Years doesn't surprise
| me at all, and that's if someone was actually motivated.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > This is government
|
| It actually isn't. This sort of thing isn't particularly
| common and people are usually prevented from setting
| these situations up by following (however grudgingly) the
| rules.
|
| This happened where the government was dysfunctional,
| corrupt, bankrupt and the country was under huge strain.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| How many governments do you think have a ready-made safe
| and secured spot in waiting to store thousands of tons of
| explosives? Some very wealthy nations might, but I
| suspect very few could have handled this much better.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Isn't it what military is for? Surely every military on
| the planet has protocols and infrastructure around
| ordnance disposal. As well as logistics capability to
| pick it up and transport to the disposal/storage site.
| lostlogin wrote:
| And yet explosions this large are rare. Taking the
| material off the owner is a last resort. Regulation can
| prevent the problem long before it gets to the stage it
| got to in Lebanon.
|
| Assuming I'm wrong, why are there not more explosions?
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| So this means you can blow up another country by just
| sending a ship full of explosives to their dock with
| invalid papers... perfection.
| lliamander wrote:
| I agree with your assessment of why moving the explosives
| was so difficult, but I would quibble with the use of
| "nimby" in this context. I think most anyone has a
| legitimate concern for not wanting that in their
| vicinity.
| CountSessine wrote:
| The captain of the ship had some interesting things to say
| about the whole debacle.
|
| - The ship had to dock in Beirut because they found out
| they were short of the passage fee for the Suez Canal.
|
| - They were going to raise more money to get through the
| canal by taking on a job transporting machinery from Beirut
| along with the explosives
|
| - The ship would have been overburdened by the machinery
| and the explosives, so they couldn't pass an inspection and
| couldn't leave.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53683082
| pantalaimon wrote:
| If they seized it, couldn't they just have sold it to get
| rid of it?
| onetimemanytime wrote:
| looking back yes. But IIRC, bankruptcy was declared and
| this was someone's property. Obviously pretty stupid but
| everyone must have hoped it will solve itself. They could
| have sold it and held the money in an account, it's not
| like they were the crown jewels of the British Royal
| family. $12 Billion negligence, plus the dead and
| wounded.
| Dahoon wrote:
| It was from an abandoned ship that sunk. The owner should be
| blamed first. I wonder if Lebanon will try to punish them or
| just focus on pointing fingers internally.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > It was from an abandoned ship that sunk.
|
| If only. It was unloaded first.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lebanon-security-blast-
| do...
| H8crilA wrote:
| And all this time one could have just used it as a free
| fertiliser subsidy to some farmers ...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| If the results weren't so horrifically tragic this would seem
| like a set up for a Simpson's gag:
|
| 1. Store 2750 tons of an explosive in the port of a major city.
|
| 2. Store it next to some fireworks???!!!
|
| 3. Do a welding job on the building.
|
| This is stunning incompetence.
| keyme wrote:
| So Nasrallah forgets about 2750 tons of fertilizer in the
| middle of Beirut. I suggest you folks start thinking about what
| kind of shit he's hiding under your feet that he doesn't forget
| about.
| Pxtl wrote:
| Yeah, I hope this is a wake-up call to every large city around
| the world to audit their storage of explosives within the city.
|
| And yes, authoritarian regimes have the _least_ excuse, because
| they constantly demonstrate how they 're willing to wield their
| power against protestors and dissidents.
| mdoms wrote:
| Astonishingly there is a proposal to store many times more
| ammonium nitrate next to a population center in Australia and
| it looks to be going ahead.
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/national/lebanon-blast-alarms-nsw-
| res...
| TimesOldRoman wrote:
| Does this make a case for pro-Federal-Government? What would a
| libertarian say about how a society would prevent these types of
| accidents?
| hprotagonist wrote:
| Welding without sufficient care can cause a _lot_ of trouble.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Boston_Brownstone_fire I
| hadn't seen a fire go to 9 alarms before this one.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| It seems silly to blame the spark, rather than the fuel.
|
| If there was a massive, undetected gas-leak that erupts into a
| fireball when a guy strikes a match, you don't blame the guy
| for the damage.
| ip26 wrote:
| Yeah, but if there was a massive dry fuel load in the
| California mountains caused by a hundred years of poorly
| informed forest management strategy, and some hypothetical
| electrical utility sparked & burned it all down, then you
| _do_ blame the spark!
| pixl97 wrote:
| Really the welding was the thing that matters least in this
| case. The environment that was created was so incredibly
| dangerous, so incredibly negligent that practically anything
| involving a spark would have caused this incident.
|
| Fireworks near AN? Why not play Russian roulette with a single
| shot.
|
| Storing AN for 6 years? Madness.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| When storing 2,750 tons of AN inappropriately near other
| flammable materials, the question isn't "why did it explode",
| the question is "why didn't it explode for 6 years?"
|
| This was bound to be the outcome eventually until someone got
| around to actually storing that stuff correctly. It seems a
| small batch of welders just finally drew the short straw.
| rectang wrote:
| So what? The welders are an utterly inconsequential distraction
| from much more important lines of inquiry.
| rolph wrote:
| wet canvas curtains and dropsheets are a must when i weld, even
| over a concrete pad
| myth_buster wrote:
| > the port sent a team of Syrian workers to fix the warehouse
|
| Welder's nationality doesn't seem to me a relevant info to be
| included in a postmortem.
| keenmaster wrote:
| We haven't been told the race of the person who ordered the
| welding, the race of the judge who ordered that the nitrate
| stay on the port, the race of the people who put fireworks next
| to thousands of tons of highly explosive material in a dense
| city, etc...
|
| Someone is trying to make Syrian refugees into Girardian black
| sheep. This wouldn't be the first time. The irony is that
| Bashar Al Assad used nitrate-filled barrel bombs to decimate
| the Syrian people, and he is supported by Hezbollah and Iran,
| which have a huge influence in Lebanon. Their influence cannot
| be separated from the incompetence and corruption that led to
| the blast.
|
| Here's the really crazy part: some people are saying that a lot
| of the nitrate which was originally stored must have been
| smuggled out, because otherwise the blast would have been
| larger. If true, it wouldn't be surprising that the nitrate was
| smuggled for Assad to use in barrel bombs.
|
| Here's a list of barrel bombs dropped by the Syrian Air Force.
| That's a lot of nitrate...:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Syrian_Civil_War_barre...
| george120 wrote:
| Indeed Prime tries to encourage employers to think about such
| candidates by using coding tests on its platform, aimed toward
| showing employers than "non-traditional candidates" are even as
| skilled as children beginning of the halls of academia.
|
| Seen helps employers more easily connect with not just some of
| the toughest to fill tech roles Indeed data shows that the
| toughest to fill tech role within the US is programmer
| https://www.bloggerzune.com/2020/07/Indeed-Prime.html?m=1
| aaron695 wrote:
| HN's hive mind will never get it but if it interests you here's a
| great write up of how this happened in Texas, deals with some of
| the government processes and creep too -
|
| https://youtu.be/pdDuHxwD5R4
|
| CBS is a great resource that should be shown in high schools.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Scarey that a judge ordered the detention of this material and
| kept it and kept it in a populated area for years despite
| multiple regular objections...
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Incompetence should never lead to a city exploding.
|
| Whose whats when where why so much nitrite?
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| Ars Technica has an article [1] with some answers.
|
| 1 - https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/08/ripped-chemical-
| bags...
| fhub wrote:
| I think many people are picturing the firework fuse getting
| ignited by a spark. But it seems more plausible that the
| packaging/box caught fire igniting the fireworks inside. Perhaps
| the packing/boxes obscured the contents of the boxes.
| beamatronic wrote:
| Who stores fireworks next to ammonium nitrate?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I love the description, welders working over a pile of fireworks
| stored next to a ginormous pile of Ammonium Nitrate.
|
| So in many ways it really was a bomb, but one constructed by
| circumstance rather than intent.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks,
| which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache._
|
| Seems a little unfair to blame this solely on welders -- the root
| cause was whoever decided it was a good idea to store 2700 tons
| of explosive fertilizer so close to a city.
|
| Secondary is whoever decided it was a good idea to store
| fireworks in the warehouse that stored this explosive fertilizer.
|
| Last on the list is the welders that were told to work on this
| door near the fireworks and fertilizer.
| gorbachev wrote:
| Forgot the people who thought it'd be a good idea to contract
| welders to do the work knowing what stored nearby.
| tim333 wrote:
| >explosive fertilizer
|
| Seems it may have been made for use as a straight explosive
| rather than fertilizer:
| https://twitter.com/ArmsControlWonk/status/12907955327014256...
| LatteLazy wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions
|
| Interesting history on why there explosives were stored in the
| port in the first place...
| UnrealTriGGerZ wrote:
| We're not going to let a bunch of n1ggers upset the world! anti-
| bombs unite!!!! hack the plane7
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