Two huge explosions have rocked Beirut, killing at least 78 people, injuring thousands more, and sending an enormous blast wave across the … And nitrate, when mixed to blow, wants to ditch those little Os. He would “reveal facts” about the warehouse soon, he said, but did not want to pre-empt an investigation. But their excess energy has to go somewhere. Oxygen is the key to ammonium nitrateâs 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. 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. Walid Assi was cooking at a Beirut pizza joint on Tuesday night when a huge blast wave pushed him down. Within that radius, the injuries from such a massive blast in a downtown location can be as varied as the victims who experience them, but a number of them are likely from glass and other flying projectiles. They rushed in to help. It’s not yet clear what caused the blast. On August 4, the world was rocked by footage of a fearsome explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. So, the natural reddish color becomes even deeper, richer, darker than it would be for a small blast. 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. Germany, too, knows the destructive power of improperly stored ammonium nitrate, and an accident in that country reinforces the calculation of the charge size. 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 … The enormous blast could be heard some 125 miles away in Cyprus after it erupted in the port area of Beirut. Governments worldwide have offered support, including the UK, France, Australia, the US, Canada and Israel. 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: âHold up the train. 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. The scale of the damage is huge, with buildings miles from the port lying in ruin. From Beirut too, will gradually emerge stories of heroism and savvy, along with the final accounting of lives lost. The speed of sound in air is 343 meters per second. Itâs chemically unstable, meaning the bonds between the Ns and the Os vibrate with an unhappy level of physical tension. The explosion wasnât a military-grade bomb; it most certainly wasnât a nuclear one. Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud said as many as 300,000 people had been made temporarily homeless and that collective losses might reach $10-15bn (£8-11bn). It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation. The videos also show an unnervingly uniform hemisphere of white propagating outward from the blast site, a dome of vicious vapor that eventually hurtles toward every person filming and announces its arrival in the audio with a crash. No, itâs not a shock wave. On August 4, 2020, a massive explosion blasted deadly waves through downtown Beirut. For reference, the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 used the equivalent of 1.8 thousand kilograms of TNT. This hemisphere is the pressure wave produced by the explosion. 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. Munitions ship on fire and making for Pier 6 ... Goodbye boys.â 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 Colemanâs quick thinking, every doctor who felt the earth rumble, up to 160 km away, had almost immediate access to news about what had happened. 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. The ground beneath him shook. Dozens are still missing, feared dead. To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. The more mundane explosions are rarely this size, but the same principles of physics and chemistry apply. Now, details of the blast that started in a fireworks storage area by a small storage building at the end of a Beirut pier trickle in as the world waits to hear what the final death, injury, and destruction tallies will be. A study finds sex differences in the brain. In Beirut, thankfully, while building damage has been reported up to 5.6 miles away, because the low-explosive ammonium nitrate made a pressure wave rather than a shock wave, the fatality estimates so far are still in the hundreds, even though the charge size was likely larger than the bomb in Halifax. After a blast in a civilian area, emergency responders arenât the only heroes. However, photos shared on social media showed bags marked âNitroprill HDâ supposedly being stored at the Beirut pier, and some have speculated that if those photos are accurate, Nitroprill may be a knockoff of the name-brand blasting agent Nitropril. On August 4, 2020, a massive explosion blasted deadly waves through downtown Beirut. Beirut - A huge explosion near the centre of Beirut killed at least 10 people and sent shock waves across the Lebanese capital, shattering glass in people's homes and … 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. Lebanon's caretaker PM and ex-ministers charged over Beirut blast, A city in need of miracles: few glimmers of hope in Beirut's reconstruction effort, Beirut's destroyed clubbing district: 'I don't know how we will recover', Beirut rescuers give up after sensors gave false hopes of more survivors, Possible sign of life detected under Beirut rubble weeks after blast, Beirut explosion devastates Sursock Palace and Museum – in pictures, Beirut explosion: FBI to take part in Lebanon investigation, If ever there was a moment for change in Lebanon, this must surely be it, Latest story: death toll rises to 137 as army takes control of site, Ground zero: a rip through the heart of an already dying city. He said Lebanon was facing a political and economic crisis and that it would continue to suffer unless it enacted reforms. After that, the hospitals get flooded by âwalking wounded,â those who are wounded enough to seek medical care but intact enough to transport themselves. A MASSIVE explosion in Lebanon's capital city Beirut has killed at least 135 people and injured nearly 5,000 others. At 120 meters in diameter, following the explosion of 4.1 million kilos of ammonium nitrate, the size of the Oppau crater supports the idea that the Beirut pier, which early reports said held only 2,750 metric tonsâ2.75 million kilogramsâmay have held some number of millions more kilograms of charge. Then, video of the fireball rippled around the world almost as quickly. 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 … 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 … When a smoke plume happens on such a large scale, only the longest wavelengths, the red shades, persevere all the way through to the viewer on the other side. Wired may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. 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. As a result, of those wounded on that morning in 1917, injuries of shattered glass penetrating the eyes of onlookers were described as âextraordinarily prevalent.â The accident of the fireworks storage area and its alarming plume of smoke similarly guaranteed plenty of onlookers for Beirut. âAmmoniumâ is a nitrogen atom with four hydrogens, written NH4+, whereas the ânitrateâ part of the mix is a nitrogen with three oxygens, NO3-. 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. A string of explosions Seismological data suggests that six blasts … 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. 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. As a biomedical engineer with a doctorate in the patterns of injury and trauma that follow an explosion, scraping together information from accidental blasts is part of my daily work. 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. Unstable structures barter and swap atoms with one another until all of them, happy with their trades, blissfully settle into more relaxed, lower-energy states, like rocks reaching the bottom of a hill. The explosion was so powerful that all the buildings in the city’s business district and even the airport, which is in a different part of the city, were damaged by the blast wave. The first reports out of Beirut suggested fertilizer may have once again been the culprit. High explosives produce shock waves; low explosives, like ammonium nitrate, produce pressure waves, which have a bit of slope to their shape, a period of time over which the pressure increases more gradually. 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. 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. A massive explosion in Beirut, Lebanon, sent shock waves across the ground, triggering an estimated magnitude 3.3-4.5 earthquake. At least 100 people are dead and 4,000 are injured after a massive explosion on Tuesday shook the capital city of Beirut — with Lebanon continuing its search for survivors on Wednesday. When Tuesday, November 17, 2020 from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM EST Add to Calendar. An Australian citizen and an employee at the German embassy in Beirut have been confirmed among the dead. 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. To a blast expert, the videos, with their roiling cloud of black and red curling over the pier of Beirut, scream âammonium nitrate.â. Medical personnel dealt with as many of the first, second, and even third waves of injured patients as fast as humanly possible, some of them even creating makeshift treatment centers on trains. But what exactly happened in Lebanon on Tuesday, August 4, after months of economic chaos? An explosion in the port of Lebanon’s capital on Tuesday devastated the city, Thu 6 Aug 2020 11.35 BST A MASSIVE explosion rocked Beirut, Lebanon on Tuesday. The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our livesâfrom culture to business, science to design. 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 (thatâs 3.8 to 11.8 million pounds for any Americans dragging their feet on converting to metric). 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