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Large explosion in Beirut... 23

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In the picture of the JohnRBaker post (6 Aug 20 05:11 above) you see a white ship to the right of the crater that is severely listing. This is the 120.8m (396 ft) cruise ship Queen Orient. Two crewmen were killed. The ship is now fully capsized on its starboard side.
 
In the aerial imagery, you can see four ships north of the grain elevators after the blast - two tied up alongside the north-west quay, and two slightly bigger ships that are tied alongside each other and slightly skew of the north-east quay. FleetMon reports that three ships ("Mero Star", "Raouf", and "Jouri") have been "off-line" since the blast - but maybe they have just had their comms systems disabled, rather than being totally obliterated without trace?

After_zstzql.jpg


I've also seen a "before" shot which appears to show the same two larger ships (which are also visible in the current "Google Maps" aerial imagery, so maybe they've been tied up there for some time?), with two smaller ships adjacent to the warehouse, but no sign of the two ships on the north-west quay, but I'm not sure of the time / date of this image:

Before_-_time_and_date_uncertain_spek83.jpg


"Orient Queen" (which appears to have been bigger than any of the other ships visible in the aerial imagery) capsized and sank at berth some 500 metres from the warehouse - it's not inconceivable that any small ships tied up adjacent to the warehouse may have been totally destroyed.

 
It's also no mystery where the ammonium nitrate was being stored ;-)

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
Fun question.

The SS Minnow has just parked in your harbour with several thousand tons of ammonium nitrate, and the owners and crew are nowhere to be found.

How do you get rid of this stuff?

--
JHG
 
This was never an engineering failure, it was an abject failure of governance in a country still ruled by competing warlords. Every government since the bombs arrived 6 years ago has known about it.

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."
 

2750 tonnes = 3025 tons.

Dik
 
dik,

2795 tons. Traditionally, ship displacement and deadweight tonnages are in long tons.

--
JHG
 
Didn't know that... the article I read gave the weight at 2750 tonnes (metric) which is equivalent to 3025 tons (short weight? or common tons).

Dik
 
The ammonium nitrate was no longer on board a ship.
The short ton conversion may be appropriate for comparison to other shore based ammonium nitrate explosions.
But what is the reason for the difference in tons?
A short ton is 20 US hundred-weights, each weighing 100 lbs as the name implies.
A long ton is 20 British hundred-weights, each weighing 112 lbs. One definition, separated by a common language.
Pop quiz; What other common measure in addition to the gallon and the hundred-weight is assumed to be the same but is not?

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
 
waross said:
Pop quiz; What other common measure in addition to the gallon and the hundred-weight is assumed to be the same but is not?
Click to expand...
Singular? There are many, especially if you cross into other countries and languages beyond the UK and the US. A mere 2 countries in the world.

This was the reference on my first google search and start unpacking this to see so much difference...

"The British Imperial fluid ounce is equal to 28.413 milliliters, while the US Customary fluid ounce is 29.573 ml. The British Imperial pint is 568.261 ml (20 fluid ounces), while the US Customary pint is 473.176 ml (16 fl oz). The British Imperial quart is 1.13 liters (40 fl oz), while the US Customary quart is 0.94 L (32 fl oz). The British Imperial gallon is 4.54 L (160 fl oz), while the US Customary gallon is 3.78 L (128 fl oz)."
 
Don't you just love the metric system...


Dik
 
Yep, you don't need any of those conversions.
 
Mechanics Calculator MDCCCXXXV

Weights_Measure_pdhgdt.png

--
JHG
 
Presently, the Beirut explosion is ranked the 6th largest accidental ammonium nitrate explosions in terms of death.
It is ranked the 3rd largest accidental ammonium nitrate explosion in terms of yield (1.3kt of TNT). The 1947 Texas City explosion is ranked largest at 3.0kt.

Interesting article. It list some blasts I've never heard of.
 
Apparently there's a story circulating around the Middle-East that the explosion was the unintended consequence of an operation by the Israelis. The story goes that Hezbollah was storing guns and ammunition in a warehouse in the port of Beirut and Israel sent a team in to destroy this stockpile of weapons. Unfortunately, they were not aware that the warehouse next to the one in which the munitions had been stored, contained the ammonium nitrate. This would account for the smaller secondary explosions seen after the first blast, but before the larger explosion. Also, from the videos, it looked like the initial fire/explosion could have come from that first warehouse, closer to the end of the pier, as seen in the aerial photos. This would be consistent with the story that the ammonium nitrate explosion was unintentional.

Note that I read this in another forum where this incident was being discussed, a forum where admittedly the quality of many of the posts are not nearly up to the level of what is found here.

John R. Baker, P.E. (ret)
EX-Product 'Evangelist'
Irvine, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

The secret of life is not finding someone to live with
It's finding someone you can't live without
 
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