[airborne]

You could clearly see the fireworks going off.

[lefty-lie-spy]

I think it’s lightning.

[wbarmy]

That is not fireworks going off. In other videos of fireworks accidents, some of them do what they are designed to do, produce multi-colored explosions and a light show. None of those small explosions produced any kind of light show at all, they were whipcrack explosions, rounds of some kind.

[rlmorel]

When I first saw this explosion, I said there was no way that was a fireworks explosion. There was too much potential energy being released in too short a time.

I know that fireworks explosions can be big, there was one in China a few years back, but, even watching that, it in no way had the same violence as the one in Beirut.

I thought the fireworks were small arms, which made me think it was a munitions dump. You know, when in North America and you hear hooves, you think horses, and not zebras. In the Middle East, when you see explosions, you think munitions, not fireworks.

It is pretty clear there were fireworks going off there before hand, so I was wrong in not buying what I thought was a cover story.

But it sure was more than fireworks. The force of that blast was astonishing. I don't know how many FPS that video was, but I went through it frame by frame, watching the blast wave advance, seeing buildings first shrug off decades of debris and dust as the leading edge approached, then disintegrating when the full blast hit.

In the last frame right before it hits the building in the foreground that is probably between 75-125 yards away, it looks like this from frame to frame:

[Joe Boucher]

Fireworks or a Iranian weapons depot?

[logi_cal869]

“You could clearly see the fireworks going off”

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Between that and the ammonium nitrate, it’s turned out to be a rather good cover story, hasn’t it???