per CNN:
- Lebanon's Prime Minister Hassan Diab said that 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate, which is typically used as an agricultural fertilizer, had been stored for six years at a port warehouse without safety measures
- Initial reports in state media blamed the blast on a major fire at a firecrackers warehouse near the port
- at least 100 people have been killed, 4,000 wounded, those numbers will rise
- four hospitals are out of service because of damage from the explosion
- the United States Embassy in Beirut urged those in the area to "stay indoors and wear masks if available" due to reports of toxic gases released from the blast.
- Anthony May, a retired ATF explosives investigator for the US government, said that the bright or dark red cloud seen in videos of the blast "is not consistent with ammonium nitrate." The telltale sign of the compound would be a yellow smoke cloud, he said. "I'm not saying that ammonium nitrate was not involved in this, it may have been but it appears that there were other items in there as well," May said.
- The amount of explosives and the shockwaves created by the blast, May said, "is typical of what would be equivalent to a kiloton nuclear bomb going off as far as the explosive weight is concerned. There was no nuclear material that we know of involved in this, but the shock wave generated, the blast wave generated is at equivalent to a small nuclear device," May said.
- Blast registered as a 3.3 magnitude earthquake
Lebanon was already experiencing a major economic crisis, on the verge of collapsing into a failed state a la Somalia or Yemen. add the pandemic and now this... you have to wonder how this country is going to survive.
