To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. And nitrate, when mixed to blow, wants to ditch those little Os. A small blast can look subtle and orange-ish, but on a large scale like at Beirut, the sunlight helps deepen its hue. According to Brad Wojtylak, a special agent bomb technician and certified explosive specialist with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, when smoke plumes are large enough, they begin to catch the sunlight, and refraction will darken the normal colors produced by any explosion. Hospitals that were already dealing with the coronavirus crisis were quickly filled beyond capacity, and issued pleas for blood donations and generators to keep the lights going. Beirut blast: Confiscated ammonium nitrate from ship in 2014 could have sparked deadly explosion. An explosion in the port of Lebanon’s capital on Tuesday devastated the city, Thu 6 Aug 2020 11.35 BST It … The third wave is made up of those at the core of the site, too injured to walk, whom the emergency responders combing the wreckage medically prioritize next. The enormous blast could be heard some 125 miles away in Cyprus after it erupted in the port area of Beirut. Munitions ship on fire and making for Pier 6 ... Goodbye boys.” Coleman died in the blast at 9:05, but his final message saved thousands, not just the passengers on the trains that were able to stop before entering the zone of destruction, but also the citizens already in Halifax: The telegram signal reached every operator in the surrounding region, and because of Coleman’s quick thinking, every doctor who felt the earth rumble, up to 160 km away, had almost immediate access to news about what had happened. On August 4, the world was rocked by footage of a fearsome explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. The chemical rearrangement of ammonium nitrate answers a lot of the public questions about the videos, including the source of the startling red color of the plume. Lebanese rescue workers searched for survivors in the mangled wreckage of buildings and investigators blamed negligence for a massive warehouse explosion that sent a … Buckland treated casualties following a natural gas explosion in Durham, North Carolina, in 2019 which, while substantially smaller in size, occurred in a densely populated downtown area. Flat, delicate, frangible, and installed in large sheets, glass is the perfect target for a blast wave of even minuscule magnitude; it shatters and flies easier than any other substance. For reference, the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 used the equivalent of 1.8 thousand kilograms of TNT. All rights reserved. By measuring the times at which the pressure wave reaches these landmarks on the video, we know that, as it blazed down the pier, its rampage occurred at a speed of only 312 meters per second. (The ships that exploded in the harbor were known to be carrying high explosives, which by their nature always make shock waves.) In an explosion, however, the devilish little instigator that is oxygen shoves the process into overdrive. In 1921, a fertilizer explosion in Oppau, Germany, carved a remarkably similar crater. But their excess energy has to go somewhere. Without smoke drawing these witnesses, we would not have such ample cell phone footage, but there also might have been fewer injuries. However, the indications of radiations were not observed. Early reports of the blast revealed that the building that sparked the eruption may have been storing large quantities of ammonium nitrate, an explodable chemical that has relatively harmless manifestations as fertilizer but has also been experimented with as a rocket fuel. The detonation of the first atomic weaponry above Hiroshima occurred almost exactly 75 years ago to the day, and despite its historically unprecedented trauma to the city and populace, it left behind no crater. Ad Choices, The Tragic Physics of the Deadly Explosion in Beirut. Shocks, because of their fascinating and complex physics, travel faster than the speed of sound, and they cause far more damage than pressure waves. Governments worldwide have offered support, including the UK, France, Australia, the US, Canada and Israel. Wojtylak is not directly involved in the Beirut investigation but has 16 years of experience investigating blast accidents. But accidental explosions are far less tidy, and their sloppy combustion also produces ash, particulates, and gross black charred contaminated matter. How big was the blast? This hemisphere is the pressure wave produced by the explosion. A shock wave goes from zero pressure to its absolute maximum pressure in literally zero seconds. But as the other dispatchers ran for their lives, Coleman realized the number of train passengers set to arrive at Halifax any moment, and so he stayed long enough to send one final telegram: “Hold up the train. © 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. The more mundane explosions are rarely this size, but the same principles of physics and chemistry apply. The ground beneath him shook. From Beirut too, will gradually emerge stories of heroism and savvy, along with the final accounting of lives lost. “We have enough inventory and boats on their way to cover the needs of Lebanon on the long term.”. This black gunk billows into the sky along with the other byproducts, coloring the smoke plume, like the charcoal residue left behind after the more efficient parts of the campfire wood have burned away. Overloaded with three oxygens, NO3- is eager to shove some onto any neighbor, and with a little bit of heat to get things moving, it will do so willingly. Thankfully, we know this blast did not produce a shock because the speed of the water-vapor-filled white dome can be measured. As we learn more about Beirut, which could possibly challenge that record, the story of Halifax tells us what we might expect to learn about the ensuing trauma, and the modern cell phone videos, along with the blast physics gleaned by scientists in the intervening century, tell us why those patterns of trauma occurred in quite the way they did. Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud told broadcaster LBC the blast had caused damage worth up to $5 billion, and possibly more, and left up to 250,000 people without homes. In a campfire, where the chemical reactions are facilitated in a leisurely way by the oxygen in the air alone, energy is released slowly as enjoyable levels of heat and light. Many explosive materials give off tints and hues during a blast that suggest their chemical composition—chemical additives to color both smoke and explosions have been around since before the 1920s and are how we get different-colored fireworks and signaling flares—and it’s nitrogen dioxide that gives an ammonium nitrate explosion its signature, ominous blood-like tone. Four officials accused of negligence in connection with explosion at port, which killed more than 200 people, Business is strong for glaziers but the mood among most rescuers and residents is sombre, Lebanon’s club scene was perhaps the most vibrant in the Middle East, but the explosion that rocked its capital last month has silenced it. On Tuesday evening in Lebanon’s capital city of Beirut, two huge explosions in its port sent an enormous blast wave across the city, killing at least 137 people and injuring around 5,000 more. To a blast expert, the videos, with their roiling cloud of black and red curling over the pier of Beirut, scream “ammonium nitrate.”. “There is no bread or flour crisis,” he said. Lebanese rescue workers searched for survivors in the mangled wreckage of buildings and investigators blamed negligence for a massive warehouse explosion that sent a devastating blast wave across Beirut, killing at least 113 people. I outline an alternative approach using Open Street Map data to create a 3D model of Beirut and the explosion to analyze directional blast damage. On Aug. 4, a series of massive explosions rocked the port of Beirut in Lebanon, and the biggest was one of the most powerful blasts in history that was not produced by … Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Your California Privacy Rights. Every fire is a rearrangement of molecules, and an explosion is basically a fire turbocharged into a hyper-energy-fueled frenzy. The army took control of the site on Thursday on the first day of a two-week state of emergency. © 2020 Condé Nast. BEIRUT — Lebanese rescue teams pulled out bodies and hunted for missing people on Wednesday from the wreckage caused by a massive warehouse explosion that sent a devastating blast wave across Beirut, killing at least 135. ON AUGUST 4, 2020, a massive explosion blasted deadly waves through downtown Beirut. The suspected cause of the deadly blast in Beirut appears to be a highly-reactive chemical stored in a warehouse at the city's port. Dozens are still missing, feared dead. We spoke to promoters and DJs picking up the pieces, Signs of life detected in remains of building by port in Lebanon’s capital were of fellow rescuers, Available for everyone, funded by readers. It was, sadly, tragically, history repeating itself yet again: Explosives can be devastatingly lethal, and we should never underestimate their destructive fury. Nitropril is designed for use in coal mines, so this particular breed of ammonium nitrate would not have been mixed with quieting chemicals like a fertilizer would be; rather, it would have been mixed to blow. A blast injury specialist explores the chemistry—and history—of explosions like the one captured in videos that swept across the world. The speed of sound in air is 343 meters per second. Lebanon’s prime minister, Hassan Diab, said the cause of the explosion was 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate. Analysis of the aerial photographs of the pier shows a crater in the range of 120 to 140 meters in diameter; blast physics mixed with history tell us that to carve a chunk that size from the side of the planet requires a charge equivalent to 1.7 to 5.4 million kilograms of TNT (that’s 3.8 to 11.8 million pounds for any Americans dragging their feet on converting to metric). The Lebanese economic minister, Raoul Nehme, said damage to the silos had left the country with less than a month’s grain reserves but claimed there was no risk of food shortage. As an aside, nuclear weaponry is set to detonate several hundred feet above ground level, and therefore doesn’t exert enough force directly on the soil to create a crater. On August 4, 2020, a massive explosion blasted deadly waves through downtown Beirut. In Halifax, the fire that eventually triggered the main explosion meant that citizens were already positioned at their windows to watch the excitement when the bomb detonated. In 1917, an accidental detonation of 6 million pounds of hodgepodge high explosives in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia, left a swath of wreckage that, at least until Tuesday, was the largest nonnuclear explosion ever created by humanity. Thanks to modern technology that charge size can be calculated scientifically too, even while waiting for more complete information to trickle out, using the size of the telltale crater. However even using only those 2,750 metric tons, Special Agent Wojtylak says his preliminary calculations indicate that those safe from all risk of carnage would have needed to be at least 15 kilometers from the Beirut pier. 💻 Upgrade your work game with our Gear team’s. Oxygen is the key to ammonium nitrate’s deadly habit of exploding, and given that 47 known, major, accidental ammonium nitrate explosions have occured in the last century, it is undeniably a habit. Beirut’s governor, Marwan Abboud, said damage from the blast extended over half of Beirut, with the cost of damage likely to be above $3bn. At 6:08 PM, on Tuesday 4 August 2020, a catastrophic explosion took place at the Port of Beirut caused by the detonation of about 2,750 metric tons (3031 US short tons) of ammonium nitrate (equivalent to around 1.1 kilotons of TNT) that had been stored … They rushed in to help. Two huge explosions have rocked Beirut, killing at least 78 people, injuring thousands more, and sending an enormous blast wave across the … But a shock wave could have caused them to drop dead from lung trauma as they watched. ASCE NCS November Section Meeting: ASCE Lebanon Section presents to ASCE National Capital Section: Beirut Blast Wave. An unspecified number of port officials have been ordered to be placed under house arrest pending an investigation, which is scheduled to take five days. An Australian citizen and an employee at the German embassy in Beirut have been confirmed among the dead. Massive blast in Beirut sends shockwaves across city A general view shows the damage at the site of Tuesday's blast in Beirut's port area, Lebanon August 5, … From that vantage, the pressure wave can be seen neatly traveling from the center of the blast first to the point halfway between the end of the pier and the edge of the long, massive gray grain silo building, a distance of 151 meters, then to the end of the pier, 262 meters, then eventually to La Mezcaleria. I traced one of the Beirut videos posted by, 6 million-pound Halifax explosion of 1917. The warehouse that authorities claim was the site of the blast had been the subject of warnings going back to 2014, he said. That’s slow for a bomb. The blast comes at a terrible time for Lebanon, which is on the brink of financial collapse. Reports indicate that the blast killed at least 30 people and injured 2,500 others. NH4+ is all too happy to accept. But in the meantime, between those who filmed the blast and the application of physics, we can prevent any escalation of conspiracy theories or misunderstandings. He said Lebanon was facing a political and economic crisis and that it would continue to suffer unless it enacted reforms. The explosion did trigger a powerful blast wave that apparently shattered windows across Beirut, and it was briefly visible as an expanding, shell-like cloud – something often … It’s chemically unstable, meaning the bonds between the Ns and the Os vibrate with an unhappy level of physical tension. On Thursday the French president, Emmanuel Macron, visited the city. The Halifax explosion resulted in the same series of events that, according to Duke University Hospital emergency room physician Dan Buckland, still occurs in emergency rooms today after mass casualty incidents. ... shock wave and the mushroom cloud. Ammonium nitrate is … The massive explosion in Beirut’s port on Tuesday shattered windows more than a mile away and sent a plume of smoke and debris soaring above the city’s tallest buildings. George, a boy that was born as the blast wave hit the hospital, is seen after birth in Beirut, Lebanon, on August 4, 2020, in this picture obtained from social media. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture business. Of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers the port area of Beirut suggested fertilizer may have again... Authorities claim was the site of the fireball rippled around the world almost as quickly principles of and. 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