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The Beirut Blast and the hidden threat in fire accidents

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On Aug 4, 2020, a blast of approximately 2,750 Metric Tonnes  Ammonium Nitrate hit the port city of Beirut.  A fire was already burning at the port warehouse, where a stock of fireworks was on fire. 10 firefighters had been dispatched to the site. Brilliant flashes of light from the exploding fireworks held the attention of onlookers in buildings within line of sight of the fire and several onlookers were busy watching and recording the sight of the enormous column of smoke rising from this fire that dwarfed even the tallest buildings around it. At 6:08 PM, the Ammonium Nitrate exploded, all 2,750 MT of it, in one instantaneous blast that left an unknown number of persons dead and thousands injured.

The role of Ammonium Nitrate in trade and industry:

 Primarily a fertiliser, Ammonium Nitrate is highly explosive but only when coming in contact with fire or even a spark, however small. Thus, isolation from any potential flame or sparks is critically important, and Ammonium Nitrate is not really known for spontaneous combustion. When it catches fire, however, the explosive power of its combustion has made it the mainstay of industrial explosives used at mines for smashing into rock formations. The extremely violent nature of its combustion has also attracted the attention of terrorists as they look for the maximum force possible in the smallest quantity of the explosive. This use of the chemical has also created such a select spot for it on the watch list of police organisations worldwide, so that anyone buying any more than the bare minimum quantity would at once come alive in the hostile watch of surveillance organisations in several countries.

An Ammonium Nitrate Fire:

Speaking to ‘Code SEVERE’, a podcast on Anti-terror operations in Great Britain, in their episode on Multiple Bombings, published in Mar 2017, a Senior  Investigations Officer of London Police, identified only as ‘Andy’ said that the shockwave of an explosion of 600 kg of Ammonium Nitrate would fly out from the blast epicentre at between 2,000 and 3,000 meters per second, and that at this speed, ‘it would not just tear away the limbs of anyone in its path, it would lift and throw a person several feet away, be it into the glass façade of a building or a concrete wall or whatever (comes first), with gruesome results.’ Regarding an outdoor blast, he likened its effect to be ‘like driving a huge cargo train right through a fully occupied office.

Stills grabbed from a video posted on twitter show the visual effects:

     

These images indicate (first image) the column of smoke from the original fire already dwarfing all the multistoried buildings around it, the second image showing the ignition of the Ammonium Nitrate, then the fireball that followed, the mushroom cloud starting to form, and the last image showing the start of the shockwave that shot out in all directions with its destructive power.

The point to note here is that once the ignition took place,  there was no time to get out of harm’s way, in spite of the distance involved (as is clear in the first image), and in one moment, what is normally our perception of ‘watching from a safe distance’ had vanished.

Now after a full day, 135 casualties have been confirmed and over 5000 injured as per official figures. Prominent among the fatalities as of now are Nazar Najarian, the secretary-general of the Kataeb Party, died after suffering severe head injuries during the blast, and Kamal Hayek, chairman of the state-owned electricity company, was in critical condition. The Kazakhstani consul was wounded in his office. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said that an employee at the German embassy had died at her home due to the explosion.

One factor for high profile victims is that many posh downtown offices and apartments faced the sea and the port and they were directly in the line of fire when the blast hit.

 

In one horrible moment, a huge part of the port suddenly disappeared. Applying the blast characteristics of Ammonium Nitrate to this area, one can guess the loss of life involved.  Given the amount of rubble that would have to be cleared, it will be long before any final estimate of lives lost would be possible.

The tragic part of this mishappening is that many victims would have been standing and concentrating on the pyrotechnics of the fireworks unaware of the tragedy that was about to occur. There was no sign of the first fire coming under control and several victims will have perished at the moment that the second blast hit.

It is a lesson from this that any fire still active is a threat and vacating its line of sight comes first, every time. It is too common to stand and stare at huge fires but this occurrence has made the risk involved all too clear.

The storage of 2750 MT of the explosive so close to densely populated parts of the city, while unexpected, is certainly not too strange, given the fact the ALL of the food, medicines clothing and other items used by the residents of Beirut are imported by sea, and the shipment of Ammonium Nitrate, once confiscated by Customs had to be stored in a warehouse belonging to them, and that warehouse had to be in the port area.

Beirut, because of security systems that have always been famous for leaking like a sieve, has a long and colourful history as a chosen point of transit for spies, smugglers, underground operators, mercenaries, and their likes. It is certainly no paragon of performance when it comes to the maintenance of law and order. The alleged lack of response from the judge whom they say they approached about the danger involved could be true, but even in that case, the question would arise about what they did about it once they failed to get a response. That and more details may probably come out in the investigation of the blast, depending on the depth of the probe and the multi-layered confusion of the local politics, involving warring factions from all neighbouring countries.

One factor needs to be kept in mind, and it would be most impractical to assume that ‘it cannot happen here.’ It is only correct that the Indian CBIC (Customs departments’parent body, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs) has asked all Indian customs offices to check their storage facilities at once about the possibility of any such material lying around unnoticed. Following this, the Chennai Customs has now reported the storage of 740 Tonnes at a Container Freight Station at Manali. This had been seized from a Salem based importer in 2015 and has since been lying there.

This prompt self-check following an event elsewhere shows a very high level of threat awareness and a very positive approach to avoid a similar situation anywhere in our control.

The tendency of onlookers to stand and watch, thereby finding themselves at risk should the situation suddenly escalate, is something else, however.  This is something that needs to be remembered whenever anything goes wrong, and the assumption that ‘it can’t get worse’ has to be scrupulously avoided.

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Arun Pinto

For Arun, Journalism is an acquired passion, one that has helped him grow as a person. As an analytical journalist who prior to adopting Journalism as a profession had wide experience in the Automotive and Pharma sector.

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