I wonder if they were trying to get rid of it (putting it near a port) but couldn’t find anyone to take it. At least anyone legitimate. Maybe a deal fell through and they ended up leaving it there. Just a guess.
This is the Beirut airport, 6 miles away.
That occurred to me, too. “Great job! You’ve confiscated huge amounts of material that can be converted into explosives. Now, what do you do with it? How do you dispose of it safely?”
A little surprised it’s still standing, honestly. Guess it was further away from the blast than the initial video made it look.
I mean, I’m no bomb disposal expert but my first thought is you take it out into the desert and blow it up.
Imagine transporting that load through the cities or urban areas. A lot of problem with hazardous materials is getting them from point A to B.
(Probably the safest, but most time consuming, is to take small loads in separate convoys).
Too bad there’s not a large body of water nearby… oh
Want to assess the environmental impact of blowing up that much explosive material in the Med? Or even just dumping it?
It’s already in a port, take it out by ship? Seems like leaving it next to Mr. Blasto’s Fireworks Shipping and Storage was not the best move, in hindsight.
Well, just put it on barges and you avoid hauling it through the middle of Beirut.
Also: if Lebanon has any desert to speak of, it’s not very large. The Med coast doesn’t seem too desert-like.
I tried to think of other explanations but they’re all dumb. The simplest explanation is some bureaucrat screwed up.
I hope they didn’t confiscate it from some terrorist group. That means they achieved the same ends due to government incompetence. Maybe it was just some run-of-the-mill black market trader that didn’t want to pay a hazardous materials duty.
Yeah, there is a little bit out east, I guess, but not very much it seems.
“Somebody fucked up” is almost always the simplest and truest explanation possible.
True that.
Several videos seem to confirm fireworks involved in the initial fire. If there were stored high explosives near by… that does seem like a tragic error, at best.
Many years ago i had to deal with some Dubai litigation around a shipment of scrap iron bought by an Indian firm from Yemen via a Dubai broker, when the 100 containers of scrap turned up there were tons of rusting artillery shells and they had to sit in a banked area nearby for 5 years whilst everyone postponed court sittings and attendances in Dubai. The court case was basically “everyone denies responsibility” and involved a dozen parties.
Just in case you’re wondering how these things can happen.
This is disturbing
It seems encouraging that the person here was only a hundred feet away from the port when the explosion went off and presumably is still alive to post the video.
The news from 40 minutes ago says 10 dead so far.
This sounds like an even better explanation. Not one person making a bad decision or showing a lack of initiative, but multiple people pointing their fingers at each other while nothing gets done.