Briareos H on 5/8/2020 at 10:01
Quote Posted by demagogue
Actually when I first saw the video, my immediate thought, the only explosion that looked anything like that that I've ever seen before, was a video of an industrial accident exploision that had happened in a town called West, Texas, in 2013, and that was also ammonium nitrate.
My thought was similar, I was immediately reminded of the (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toulouse_chemical_factory_explosion) AZF blast in Toulouse in September 2001 (talk about an unfortunate timing). "Only" 400 tonnes of ammonium nitrate and the blast was enough to shatter most windows in a city of 500k inhabitants.
lowenz on 5/8/2020 at 10:36
Quote Posted by SubJeff
I'm not buying this 76 dead figure after seeing some of the shots of the aftermath. There appear to be apartment buildings that are all but leveled.
I'll be surprised if less that 500 people have been killed.
I'll also be (pleasantly) surprised if the initial blaming of Israel, now dismissed with other explanations I still don't fully buy, didn't raise its head again.
Israel would never do this messy thing. Mossad / Shin Bet strikes with surgical precision (see January 2020). They can kill targets of interest, not level down a city.
SubJeff on 5/8/2020 at 15:14
Well I tend to agree, but that doesn't stop the haters coming out of the woodwork and blaming them. It already happened as soon as this explosion went off and before me info was revealed.
heywood on 5/8/2020 at 15:25
Some of the better coverage I've seen is here:
(
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/officials-knew-danger-beirut-port-years-200805032416684.html) https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/officials-knew-danger-beirut-port-years-200805032416684.html
This makes no sense as a terrorist attack. It makes negative sense as a state-sponsored terrorist attack. Sometimes you just have to go with Occam's razor. You don't leave kilotons of ammonium nitrate without safety controls in a port warehouse/hangar just because nobody wants to claim it, and you definitely don't put a shipment of fireworks in there with it. Heads are going to roll, starting with authorities at the port I presume.
Unfortunately, industrial disasters happen way more often than we tend to hear about in our news:
(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_industrial_disasters) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_industrial_disasters
bjack on 5/8/2020 at 16:46
Tragic incompetence. Ammonium Nitrate stored for over 6 years... yeah, that was a good idea. Heywood makes a good point. Now excuse me while I get sick over this. I don't know if it is just this incident, or the sum total of all that is going on, but I am not doing well at the moment. Nor are millions of others. Such is our fallen world. Make the best of it as you can and appreciate the good that happens. Recognize that bad will be the norm. Do your best to counteract the bad. Be kind. I'm really trying to be that person. I fail a lot, but hour by hour I am getting there.
t850terminator on 5/8/2020 at 21:08
What I’m hearing is that it was a welding accident that triggered it.
Can you imagine being that welder, just being at the center? You just doing ur job like usual one day and it all just ends before you know it.
SubJeff on 5/8/2020 at 23:16
And they expect us to believe less than 150 people died.
I see there is a £5 million target in the UK, by some charity, for a relief fund.
Pyrian on 6/8/2020 at 01:40
Quote Posted by SubJeff
And they expect us to believe less than 150 people died.
Who expects you to believe that? Every death count I've seen in the news has included some phrase like "at least".
Dia on 6/8/2020 at 12:24
Quote Posted by Pyrian
Who expects you to believe that? Every death count I've seen in the news has included some phrase like "at least".
Every article I've read about this also states that 'hundreds are still missing'. So yes, I expect the death toll will rise as the days pass.