Chemicals’ storage under scrutiny as city lies in ruin
FOR YEARS, Lebanese port officials had called for the removal of the dangerous chemicals from the waterfront warehouse that exploded killing at least 135 people and wrecking the homes of 300,000 Beirut residents, according to preliminary investigations yesterday.
Tuesday’s blast was likely to have been caused by the detonation of more than 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored at the dock since being confiscated from a cargo ship in 2014, according to Mohammed Fahmi, Lebanese interior minister.
The chemical is commonly used as a fertiliser and is not reactive on its own, but it can explode violently when detonated by an ignition source. Reports suggest a fire started by a welding accident may have ignited fireworks and caused the chemicals to explode.
The city had grown used to explosions during Lebanon’s 15-year civil war, but Beirut had seen nothing like this. The devastation came into sharper focus as the death toll steadily rose and Hamad Hassan, the health minister, warned it could climb much higher as dozens of people remained missing in the rubble. At least 4,000 were injured.
The UK will provide a £5 million aid package to Lebanon, Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, said yesterday, and Britain has offered medical workers, and search-and-rescue experts with sniffer dogs to find survivors. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that an advance party of Armed Forces personnel would be deployed to assist with the fallout. The Defence Secretary said HMS Enterprise, a survey vessel currently based in Cyprus, would be sent to help Beirut prepare to rebuild.
Mr Raab said he spoke to Hassan Diab, the Lebanese prime minister, who he said promised a “full, thorough and rigorous” inquiry.
Donald Trump yesterday continued to suggest that the blast may have been caused by a bomb. The president said: “How can you say accident? Somebody left some terrible explosive-type devices around perhaps... Perhaps it was an attack. I don’t think anybody can say.” The blast, which caused magnitude-4.5 tremors, left a crater 150 metres across on the capital’s waterfront. Around half of the city was damaged said Marwan Abboud, the governor of Beirut, who estimated that 300,000 people were now homeless.
The nitrates blamed for the explosion probably came from a Moldovanflagged ship that made an unscheduled maintenance stop in Beirut in 2013 on route to Mozambique from Georgia.
Reports at the time said the Rhosus cargo ship was prevented from leaving port due to its poor state. Its owner declared bankruptcy, leaving the vessel, its cargo and crew stranded, according to a Lebanese law firm that obtained an order to have the ship arrested on behalf of unnamed creditors. “Owing to the risks associated with [ammonium nitrate], authorities discharged the cargo on to the port’s warehouses. The vessel and cargo remain in port awaiting auctioning and/or proper disposal,” Baroudi & Associates wrote in a 2015 article published by shiparrested.com.
The head of Beirut port and the head of customs both said yesterday that letters were sent to Lebanon’s judiciary asking for the removal of the nitrates.
Hassan Koraytem, the port general manager, told OTV the material had been put in a warehouse on a court order, adding that they knew the material was dangerous but “not to this degree”.
“We requested that it be re-exported but that did not happen,” Badri Daher, director-general of Lebanese Customs, told broadcaster LBCI. A source close to a port employee said a team that inspected the material six months ago warned it could “blow up all of Beirut” if not removed. Two documents seen by Reuters showed Lebanese Customs had asked the judiciary in 2016 and 2017 that the “maritime agency” re-export or approve the sale of the material.
Lebanon’s cabinet said yesterday it was placing a number of port officials under house arrest while it investigated how the materials came to be stored at the port for years. It also declared a two-week state of emergency in the city and approved 100 billion Lebanese pounds (£50million) to deal
‘We requested that it be re-exported but that did not happen. We leave it to the experts and those concerned to determine why’
with the crisis. That will be a fraction of the amount needed for reconstruction.
The disaster will have a calamitous effect on Lebanon’s already-collapsing economy. The port, through which much of its imported food and goods arrive, was largely flattened, and much of Beirut’s commercial district was heavily damaged. Destroyed wheat silos near the site of the blast held up to 85 per cent of the country’s grain.
The tragedy prompted a court in the Netherlands to postpone its verdict in the trial of four men accused of the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, Lebanon’s former prime minister. It has been delayed until Aug 18.
The massive explosion in Beirut that killed more than 100 and injured thousands was likened by the city’s governor to Hiroshima. Without seeking to downplay the tragic impact of the blast, the parallel was misplaced. Today marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on the Japanese port, destroying it entirely and killing an estimated 200,000 people.
To this day, historians disagree over whether the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki three days later could be justified within the context of the Second World War. The Americans at the time said many more would have died had their forces been required to conquer a country whose soldiers and citizens were being told to fight to the end. So appalling was the devastation wrought by the bombs that Japan surrendered within days.
But rather than persuade the world that such weapons should be avoided at all costs, it merely convinced powerful nations that they should have them too. The post-war arms race meant a generation lived under the shadow of nuclear attack as the Cold War was played out. The world is still littered with nuclear weapons. The momentum towards arms limitation has dwindled, even to the point where existing treaties are being broken amid growing international tensions.
There are still some 14,000 nuclear weapons, some in the hands of unstable countries, and with a trend away from mass destruction missiles towards smaller tactical devices. The problem with those is that they are more likely to be used. Scientists involved in the Manhattan Project that developed the atomic bomb set a Doomsday Clock which purports to show how close the world is to annihilation. It is closer to midnight than ever.