The speed of sound in air is 343 meters per second. Based on the viewing angle and distinctive red chairs pictured in some of the later frames, I traced one of the Beirut videos posted by The Guardian to its filming location on the rooftop terrace of La Mezcaleria Rooftop Bar, and measured it to be 885 meters from the center of the blast. 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.
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. That’s slow for a bomb. Then by the time the audible crash and mayhem reached the formerly peaceful and picturesque outdoor bar, it had slowed to at most 289 meters per second. The pressure wave, slower than the 343 meters per second speed of sound, caused destruction, horror, confusion, shattered glass, torn-apart flat surfaces, and disorientation for onlookers as their ears were subjected to the rapid pressure fluctuations. But a shock wave could have caused them to drop dead from lung trauma as they watched.
Could the lure of a financial reward for officials have led to the dangerous stockpiling of highly explosive material in the heart of Beirut? Some Lebanese journalists have been asking that question following the discovery of documents relating to the seizure of the shipment.
A photo shared on social media, allegedly of the warehouse in question, shows workers in front of a warehouse packed with 1,000-kilogram bags of ammonium nitrate stamped with “Nitroprill HD,” which the arms control expert Jeffrey Lewis suggested may be a knockoff brand of Orica’s Nitropril, a mining explosive. The upper limit for storing Nitropril safely, according to the manufacturer, is 400 metric tons.
Whether corruption, negligence, or a combustible combination of both was responsible for this disaster, we may never truly know.
However, I can pull it up through the Internet Archive:
So it may be a licensing agreement, or a Georgian knockoff of a Brazilian knockoff of the Australian product.
Great analysis.
In a post here recently the videos were all analyzed to ascertain propagation speed of the blast and the result is that it went faster than just ammonium nitrate with speed that matched ANFO which is Ammonium nitrate with enhancements.
Sorry. I didn’t notice my Amp was on “11” when I turned it on.
And where did all these tons of ammonium nitrate come from?
I usually use hay bales for my concerts.
A little humor. Very little.
Beirut has been a war zone for a million years. Faceless buildings, rubble in the streets, bullet holes in any vertical structure and now the populace gets mad?
Maybe they’ll kick out a few terror organizations and rebuild their country that once was a tourist destination of beauty, history and charm.
Could be too late.
I’d seen video but not your compilations.
FPS? Calc this, calc that. I appreciate your attempted explanation but there were at least TWO separate detonations.
Sorry but I what I saw was an explosion (bomb/missle?) and then massive secondary explosions.
That’s what you get when you bomb a munitions factory and everything blows everything else up.
With that level of devastation, I doubt the local CSI is going to figure it out conclusively.
Whatever the cause having all that tonnage of ammonium nitrate in one big pile in anything except a deserted desert was criminal. Sigh.
https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docket/archive/pdfs/NIOSH-125/125-ExplosionsandRefugeChambers.pdf
The human body can survive relatively high blast overpressure without experiencing barotrauma. A 5 psi blast overpressure will rupture eardrums in about 1% of subjects,
and a 45 psi overpressure will cause eardrum rupture in about 99% of all subjects. The threshold for lung damage occurs at about 15 psi blast overpressure. A 35-45 psi
overpressure may cause 1% fatalities, and 55 to 65 psi overpressure may cause 99% fatalities.