Negligence or a missile attack?
beirut — Lebanon’s president said on Friday that a cataclysmic port blast was caused either by negligence or a missile attack, but rejected widespread calls for an international probe.
The explosion that killed more than 150 people and wounded at least 5,000 on Tuesday could have been “negligence or foreign interference through a missile or bomb”, Michel Aoun told reporters.
It was the first acknowledgement by a Lebanese official of the possibility that Tuesday’s earthshaking blast may have been caused by an attack.
Authorities had said a fire at the port had ignited tonnes of ammonium nitrate stored for years in a warehouse.
Lebanese nationals, advocacy groups and foreign heads of state had called for an international investigation into the blast to ensure
impartiality, but Aoun rejected such an initiative.
beirut — The devastating explosion in Beirut should be a wake-up call for countries on the dangers of ammonium nitrate, which caused the blast, experts say.
Lebanese authorities said 2,750 tonnes of the industrial chemical had been stored for six years at Beirut port without safety measures. That stockpile exploded on Tuesday.
Commonly used in fertilisers and as an industrial explosive, ammonium nitrate is considered relatively safe if handled properly, but it has proved lethal.
In one of the world’s deadliest industrial accidents, 567 people were killed in Texas in 1947 when 2,300 tonnes of ammonium nitrate detonated aboard a ship.
“Beirut, like Texas, is a wake-up call. We should learn from these catastrophes and make sure they don’t happen again,” said Stewart Walker, of the school of Forensic, Environmental and Analytical Chemistry at Flinders University in Adelaide.
Some countries have banned ammonium nitrate as a fertilizer because it has been used by militant bomb-makers and since Tuesday’s blast, some governments have been urged to relocate stockpiles.
Chris Owen, a UN explosives adviser, said few countries make ammonium nitrate but many use it, often importing it by sea. Since many ports have had cities develop around them, large quantities are moving through cities on a regular basis. “If it’s managed properly, it’s no risk,” Owen said.
In terms of safety, experts say, quantity, ventilation and proximity to flammables are critical, as is distance from population centres.
The United Nations has issued guidelines on safe storage and transportation but regulations vary from country to country, experts said.
Global variation on regulation is a concern, said Julia Meehan, the managing editor of ICIS Fertilizers, a trade publication. “There’s no global body that looks across it, it’s country to country or regional,” said Meehan. “It can even differ from port to port.”
One expert, who asked not to be identified, said political instability was a major factor in enforcement. He cited Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan and South American countries. “If the country is at war, or struggling with an insurgency or other problems, they have other issues to deal with,” he said.
Global data on storage is spotty, said Hans Reuvers, a German-based expert on ammonium nitrate and fertiliser technology and executive committee member at the Ammonium Nitrate/Nitric Acid Producers Study Group (ANNA).
Germany only allows 25 tonnes of pure ammonium nitrate to be stored in one place, Reuvers said. France toughened its regulations after a 2001 explosion in Toulouse killed 31 people.
“You have to store it in non-flammable bins, keep them far away from flammable materials. There are similar regulations across Europe as well as in East Asia,” Reuvers said.
Worldwide trade in ammonium nitrate in 2018 was worth $2.14 billion, with Russia the leading exporter, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, and Brazil the largest importer. —
Do we actually have a government here? There is no way to make money anymore.
Nassim Abiaad, 66, a taxi driver
I have nowhere to go except my wife’s family. How can you survive here, the economy is zero?.
Charbel Abreeni, a port employees trainer
If the country is at war, or struggling with an insurgency or other problems, they have other issues to deal with. one expert