Massive Blast in Lebanon

Bob001 said:
Question: How would this material be stored in bulk? Would it be in open piles, like sand at a quarry? Metal shipping containers? Big bags? Barrels? How would it have been transported from the freighter? Seems like storage conditions would have to be a major factor in the explosion.
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big bags.
 
The Beirut Blast Is Lebanon’s Chernobyl (Foreign Policy)

The immediate economic impact is devastating. Between 250,000 and 300,000 people have been left homeless—roughly 10 percent of the city’s population. Thousands of people need treatment at hospitals already crammed full of COVID-19 victims. The property destruction is estimated at $3 billion.

That’s a debilitating burden in a country where most people are struggling just to find the money to get by already. Even before the blasts, Lebanon was already at a breaking point. A refugee crisis from the war in neighboring Syria is almost entering its 10th year, with Lebanon already struggling to meet the aid requirements of the 30 percent of its population that has been displaced from the war in Syria.

But it is not just refugees struggling to meet their needs, with the World Food Program recording that nearly half the Lebanese population was struggling to meet basic food needs. Speaking to the Telegraph in June, Martin Keulertz, an assistant professor at the American University of Beirut, said: “By the end of the year, we will see 75 percent of the population on food handouts, but the question is whether there will be food to hand out.”

The pandemic had already brought Lebanese hospitals to their knees, and COVID-19 hit Lebanon during a period of unprecedented economic destitution, with the nation buckling under the weight of its own debt. Food prices had already risen by 247 percent, and with the blasts destroying tons of Lebanon’s remaining food stocks and wrecking a port vital to the nation’s infrastructure, the situation is set to deteriorate rapidly. Even before the explosions, some Lebanese protesters had gone as far as self-immolation.

Lebanon’s foreign minister, Nassif Hitti, had even resigned the day before the blasts, warning that “Lebanon today is sliding toward becoming a failed state.”

Given Lebanon’s history, many people, including U.S. President Donald Trump, leapt to the idea that terrorism was involved. Yet it’s not violence that has been poisoning the country in the last three decades. It’s corruption.
. . .
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They are well and truly screwed.
 
The article above argues that endemic corruption is at the root of the disaster (as well as many other problems in the country).
 
That grain silo is a really major loss to the country.

I read elsewhere that Al Jazeera reported it was Lebanon's main wheat store and they may just have lost 3 months supply for the whole country.
 
Jack by the hedge said:
That grain silo is a really major loss to the country.

I read elsewhere that Al Jazeera reported it was Lebanon's main wheat store and they may just have lost 3 months supply for the whole country.
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As this comes more into focus it seems that, as tragic as the immediate deaths and injuries are, the longer term effects could be more devastating. Lebanon could be relying on the charity of the world for a long time.
 
Puppycow said:
I wondered the same thing. I have not seen it explained so far.
I imagine it was just in a pile but I don't know. It's often kept in bags.
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I actually know someone who deals in global distribution of bulk bags for various purposes from U.S. coinage to...ammonium nitrate. He told me that he actually knows the person that sold the bags that were involved in this explosion and that they had already been contacted by the US and Lebanese governments. The bags apparently contain 1 ton each, which seems about right from the picture shown above.
 
Ziggurat said:
It’s all about the nitrogen. Nitrogen is vital to all life, but plants cannot use nitrogen from the air. They need it bonded in a solid, not as N2. But solid nitrogen compounds are often very energetic (that’s why plants can’t make it themselves). And... that’s what makes things go boom. Look up them chemical formula for different explosives, you will find a lot of them contain nitrogen.

Typical lawn fertilizer contains enough other stuff to dilute its explosive potential.
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Actually, some plants (actually, symbiotic bacteria in their roots) can make their own nitrogen from N2 air. This is primarily legumes (beans, peas, alfalfa, clover, etc.). Nitrogen fixing plants can be grown in rotation with nitrogen consuming plants to reduce the need for fertilizer.
 
CORed said:
Actually, some plants (actually, symbiotic bacteria in their roots) can make their own nitrogen from N2 air. This is primarily legumes (beans, peas, alfalfa, clover, etc.). Nitrogen fixing plants can be grown in rotation with nitrogen consuming plants to reduce the need for fertilizer.
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This was a massive quality of life improvement when the so called "Norfolk Four Rotation System" was implemented.

We learned that you could "wear out" the soil almost as soon as we started agriculture and for many, many, many centuries the practice was simply to divide your land into areas and let an area rest each season, but obviously this meant you had less land to work for food.

When they learned you could just grow clover on one part of the land, feed the clover to the livestock or eat it yourself, that was revolutionary.
 
JoeMorgue said:
This was a massive quality of life improvement when the so called "Norfolk Four Rotation System" was implemented.

We learned that you could "wear out" the soil almost as soon as we started agriculture and for many, many, many centuries the practice was simply to divide your land into areas and let an area rest each season, but obviously this meant you had less land to work for food.

When they learned you could just grow clover on one part of the land, feed the clover to the livestock or eat it yourself, that was revolutionary.
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I never knew this. My lawn could make me rich!
 
Steve said:
I never knew this. My lawn could make me rich!
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Hey, at the risk of sounding all conspiratorial, I think there is a reason the companies that make lawn care products like to call clover in a lawn a weed. They can sell you herbicides to kill it, and they will also sell you more fertilzer after you kill the clover. You might notice that, on a lawn that's not heavily ferilized, the grass will always grow taller and greener where there is clover intermingled with the grass than where there isn't.
 
Do lawn care product companies like to call clover a weed, though? And which direction does the arrow of causality really point? It seems to me like a lot of products are out there not because the producer tricked the populace into wanting them, but because the populace was obviously voting with their wallets to have that kind of product on the market.

Though I admit it's plausible that Big Lawn Care did at some point launch a massive propaganda campaign to convince millions of people that the thing they needed most in life was an even, grass-only lawn.
 
theprestige said:
Do lawn care product companies like to call clover a weed, though? And which direction does the arrow of causality really point? It seems to me like a lot of products are out there not because the producer tricked the populace into wanting them, but because the populace was obviously voting with their wallets to have that kind of product on the market.

Though I admit it's plausible that Big Lawn Care did at some point launch a massive propaganda campaign to convince millions of people that the thing they needed most in life was an even, grass-only lawn.
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Love it! :thumbsup: Summer TV commercials show that this propaganda is ongoing.

And I think we have drifted far enough off topic that this fascinating discussion should end. The events in Beirut are quite tragic.
 
deadrose said:
From maps, it looks as if the Christian section of Beirut took the worst damage.
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Good!! **** them!! That's what they get for spending all that money on a church instead of saving it for a rainy day!!! I bet the Mulsim population didn't waste their money on a church!!
 
Puppycow said:
Supposedly it arrived in one vessel in the first place though.
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I don't have the IMDG code to hand but I'm not aware of any shipment limits on AM as to quantity. There are restrictions on cargo mixing, storage conditions et cetera. It's shipped by the megatonne annually.
 
Bob001 said:
Question: How would this material be stored in bulk? Would it be in open piles, like sand at a quarry? Metal shipping containers? Big bags? Barrels? How would it have been transported from the freighter? Seems like storage conditions would have to be a major factor in the explosion.
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Large plastic sacks, typically 25 or 50kg. It's shipped by bulk freighters usually with the bags netted on pallets for movement.

ETA: my bad, this particular shipment appears to have been in bulk bag, of about a half-tonne. If you're familiar with 'skip bags' used for waste disposal they would be broadly similar.
 
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