Was this from the resulting fires? That seems like a lot of damage for a single explosion, even if it was really big.

Steel beams unmelted, checkmate Card_sultan. see, even a conventional blast of massive proportions doesn't melt steel.



almost certainly from the explosion, otherwise the various cars/trucks pictured would be scorched and burned once their gas tanks caught fire.

it's Lebanon, construction isn't exactly solid there im guessing. especially in industrial sectors.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Aug 4 2020 01:36pm

Nope, that was all this guy:

Fucking hell, in such a densely populated area, during daytime.

Reminds me a lot of the explosions in the Chinese port of Tianjin in 2015, here's a video:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Tianjin_explosions

That catastrophe was caused by the explosion of large quantities of fertilizer (ammonium nitrate) which were stored in the port. Both the type of detonation and the location in a port look very similar between the Beirut and Tianjin explosions.
This is how the aftermath looked back then:



I expect something similar in Beirut.

Reports I'm seeing is there was over 2700 TONS of ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse near the waterfront, and it's very likely that it was the source of the explosion (think Oklahoma City, writ large).

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/08/huge-explosion-rocks-lebanon-capital-beirut-live-updates-200804163620414.html

Yep, that'll do it

For comparison, the bomb used by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City had about two metric tons of ammonium nitrate.

Ammonium nitrate, same source for the explosion as back in 2015 in Tianjin. Seems I was right.

Why was that much of it stockpiled in one place? Is there a practical reason for that? I know nothing about the substance or how it’s stored

Most likely a fertilizer plant. This shit is used by the thousands of tons for fertilizer production. It's the limiting factor in plant growth worldwide.

There's two ways this explosion could have happened.

1. They let it dry out and a spark hit it, causing it to catch fire.

2. They're storing a lot of it all in one container, which causes the bottom to compress into a crystal. When the crystal cracks the energy at the crack causes it to break down into N2, H2, and O2 (that then reacts to make H2O in combustion, but that's only a secondary effect) that then breaks into a chain reaction throughout the entirety of the stockpile.

Either way, these kinds of things are semi-common. The explosion in Texas in 2013 was caused by the same thing.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Aug 4 2020 09:08pm