cpsencik04 said:

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Anyone else surprised how many videos had English being spoken?

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It's a relatively diverse place that used to be the vacation spot in that part of the world.

74OA said:

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Watch the videos full-screen. It's as though every window in the city is blown out. MORE

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Well, fortunately they live where there is a ****load of sand to make glass from. Gotta see a silver lining somewhere.

cpsencik04 said:

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Anyone else surprised how many videos had English being spoken?

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I was going to post that when something like this is happening and your life is in danger, the one phrase known world wide is "Oh My God".

Latest count is 300,000 homeless, $15B damage to the city. I'm not sure how Lebanon comes back from this: DISASTER

74OA said:

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Latest count is 300,000 homeless, $15B damage to the city. I'm not sure how Lebanon comes back from this: DISASTER

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They had 15 year civil war relatively recently, by comparison this is nothing.

Pretty cool overhead slider comparison of before and after.

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=59321100-d740-11ea-bf88-a15b6c7adf9a

sts7049 said:

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chimpanzee said:

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Eliminatus said:

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ABATTBQ11 said:

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chimpanzee said:

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It's hard to think that someone would store that much ammonium nitrate in an urban location, but then again, one or two greased palms in a place where people are accustomed to not asking too many questions of the wrong people and no one even knows.

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It was confiscated from a Russian businessman who abandoned a ship there when he went bankrupt about 5 years ago. Ship made an unscheduled stop for repairs on its way to Africa, he went bankrupt around the same time, and he abandoned it there with the crew and cargo stuck on board. It was a danger on the ship, so it was temporarily moved to the warehouse. That temporary move became a lot more permanent than anyone intended. The port officials wanted it re-exported because they knew or was dangerous, but it was stuck in the Lebanese court system and the courts weren't responding to the port officials who wanted to move it. It pretty much got stuck in limbo with, "Who owns it?" and, "Who is responsible for getting it off the docks?" and got tossed around like a legal hot potato in bureaucracy until it got bored and moved itself off the docks in record time.

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At this point it definitely looks like what it is on the surface. A horrible industrial accident.

Say what ya want about OSHA and other program we have in place, (and please do, I love bashing OSHA) but they do serve their main purpose. As much as I can see that overall situation developing here, the actual product itself would never have been allowed to stay where it was in that condition for that long.

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OSHA or not, we have local, state and federal level politicians that are accountable to voters. You have the warehouse owner that wouldn't want to house an unstable nuke indefinitely, his insurance company and neighbors that can raise all kind of cane over the issue.

In places like Beruit, all this "civilization" stuff we take for granted isn't there.

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i don't disagree, but remember West basically that was a town that grew itself around the plant. Nobody really understood nor recognized the hazards that were there over time.

yes, we in the US surely are better in a general sense. but we have plenty of recent examples of major incidents filled with regulatory failure and lack of hazard recognition.

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Fair point, maybe I'm giving us too much credit. I'd like to think that we wouldn't store that much AN next to whatever was next to it cooking off in the fire before the big explosion, but I certainly hope not, at very least not in the middle of the country's largest port.

The West explosion seems like one of those things that you expect common sense to prevent, but it didn't. I'm your average office working suburban dude and my ears perk up when I hear "ammonium nitrate", much less see tons of it laying around. Maybe that happens way more often than I realize, being an office working suburban dude.

SirLurksALot said:

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74OA said:

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Latest count is 300,000 homeless, $15B damage to the city. I'm not sure how Lebanon comes back from this: DISASTER

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They had 15 year civil war relatively recently, by comparison this is nothing.

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Hardly, Beirut is Lebanon for all intents and purposes, and this instantaneous mass destruction comes on top of the damage that gradually accumulated during the civil war. It may well be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back.............

We have to keep China out of financing / repo plans to rebuild the port. China must be kept out of the med.

I'm hearing France is expected to step-in and clean this up.

So, one of the reasons that I thought the grain elevator exploded, was watching one of the videos where the inshore end of the elevator explodes, just before the vapor cloud overtakes the image.

Counting the remaining silos, it is obvious that the inshore end of the elevator is completely gone. If you count before the blast, there are 16 pairs of silos. The 4 inshore silos are gone, the last two both facing and away from the blast, leaving 14 pair. The 14 opposite the blast appear to be intact, though I'd wager their structural integrity is gone. The 14 toward the blast are blown open.

Two possibilities.

One is that the blast was simply so strong that it obliterated four 100 foot high columns of thick, reinforced concrete.

One is that those silos may have had a secondary grain dust explosion that took them out.

Either is possible, although the video seems to imply an internal explosion on the most inshore silo, opposite the blast.

We may never really know.

74OA said:

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SirLurksALot said:

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74OA said:

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Latest count is 300,000 homeless, $15B damage to the city. I'm not sure how Lebanon comes back from this: DISASTER

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They had 15 year civil war relatively recently, by comparison this is nothing.

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Hardly, Beirut is Lebanon for all intents and purposes, and this instantaneous mass destruction comes on top of the damage that gradually accumulated during the civil war. It may well be the straw that breaks the proverbial camel's back.............

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Meh. I'm sure there will be unrest, but I doubt the country is going to collapse over this. They've definitely recovered from worse.

Burn-It said:

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I'm hearing France is expected to step-in and clean this up.

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It's a former French colony. France has historically taken the lead with events in their former colonies. Their recent military action combating Al Qeada in Mali is an example of this.

Quote:

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We need to put you and Schmellba in a cage and let you two have a last word death match.

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Whtever. The inshore end of the silos exploded just before the vapor cloud obscured the image. The inshore end is gone.

It is what it is.

CanyonAg77 said:

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Quote:

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We need to put you and Schmellba in a cage and let you two have a last word death match.

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Whtever. The inshore end of the silos exploded just before the vapor cloud obscured the image. The inshore end is gone.

It is what it is.

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If the water side had exploded it would have taken out the wharf sides ones too I think. I think the simple answer is the water side took the brunt of a 0.4 kT explosion right next to it and absorbed the energy.

Looking at the before and after pic I'm a little shocked that the two side by side docked ships are still there and upright.

third coast.. said:

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hey guys, lets just all agree the grain silo blew up so that we can help canyon get over his obsession.

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I've said all long I was guessing, like everyone else.

And the current photos show what caused my speculation. The inshore end of the elevator was blown up.

I'm trying to find it elsewhere because it's on Facebook, but someone took a couple of videos of the secondary explosion made them in negative form and you can make out an object falling out of the sky and hitting the site and the second explosion takes place. Don't know the validity of it some say it's fake some say other wise.

Found it



Edit: after really slowing it down it looks fake.

AG @ HEART said:

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Found it

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Whoa

AG @ HEART said:

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I'm trying to find it elsewhere because it's on Facebook, but someone took a couple of videos of the secondary explosion made them in negative form and you can make out an object falling out of the sky and hitting the site and the second explosion takes place.

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Let's make the elevator a compass, and the seaward end 180 degrees, the inshore end 0/360,

First video, the "missile" seems to come in from about 200 degrees, headed to the NE.

Second video, the "missile" seems to come from the NW, from about 320 degrees, headed SE.

But both "missiles" enter from the top left of the frame, transiting the frame at the same angle.

Almost as if the same photoshop image were used in both clips.

Picard said:

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AG @ HEART said:

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Found it

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Whoa

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I am not a film guy...at all. Could that be fabricated somehow?

CanyonAg77 said:

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AG @ HEART said:

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I'm trying to find it elsewhere because it's on Facebook, but someone took a couple of videos of the secondary explosion made them in negative form and you can make out an object falling out of the sky and hitting the site and the second explosion takes place.

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Let's make the elevator a compass, and the seaward end 180 degrees, the inshore end 0/360,

First video, the "missile" seems to come in from about 200 degrees, headed to the NE.

Second video, the "missile" seems to come from the NW, form about 320 degrees.

But both "missiles" enter from the top left of the frame, transiting the frame at the same angle.

Almost as if the same photoshop image were used in both clips.

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Yea I took a slower look at it and the projectile is almost the same size in both vids looks fake.

Picard said:

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AG @ HEART said:

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Found it

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Whoa

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shooped

AG @ HEART said:

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Found it



Edit: after really slowing it down it looks fake.

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Interesting stuff right there

wonder if that missile is fake or real?

Curious to know how you can tell?

AG @ HEART said:

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Edit: after really slowing it down it looks fake.

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Good point. If you slow the playback speed to 0.25, in the first clip, the "missile" is as big as the elevator, so over 100 feet long.

In both clips, the "missile" is like a cartoon, and is moving way too slow.

Will try to post a screen grab

First "missile"



Close up of first "missile"



Second "missile"



Close up of second "missile", which amazingly is approaching at the exact angle, size of missile in frame, etc.




EDIT: Sorry, I have no idea why TexAgs doesn't like my first photo. I'll try it again, with a different name

stolen from tigerdroppings so can't vouch for authenticity but FWIW.

CanyonAg77 said:

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AG @ HEART said:

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Edit: after really slowing it down it looks fake.

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Good point. If you slow the playback speed to 0.25, in the first clip, the "missile" is as big as the elevator, so over 100 feet long.

In both clips, the "missile" is like a cartoon, and is moving way too slow.

Will try to post a screen grab

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it looks like an incredibly large frog gig too....maybe it's a trident from Poseidon and he's still pissed about Troy

lunchbox said:

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forgive my ignorance of the names of boat thingys, but in the left pic, there is a gray stack looking thingy next to the yellow handrails, in the right hand pic, they are red.

EDIT: there is also red trim along the top of the Bridge in the right hand pic. Could be that the boat was repainted, but both images have signs of rust, and the ammonium nitrate was only there for 4 years supposedly. The left pic would have to be the "before" pic, as it has the cargo. That means the after pic is less than 4 years old, but has a new paint job and significant rust. Did they slap some crap paint on it without properly cleaning/treating the boat, so that it just rusted through?

i guess that is the boat, this article actually gives some more info and photos

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/beiruts-accidental-cargo-how-an-unscheduled-port-visit-led-to-disaster/ar-BB17E7iG