{"id":176182,"date":"2020-08-16T18:31:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-16T23:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/16\/its-always-the-hot-work-that-gets-you\/"},"modified":"2020-08-16T18:31:00","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T23:31:00","slug":"its-always-the-hot-work-that-gets-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/08\/16\/its-always-the-hot-work-that-gets-you\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s Always the Hot Work that Gets You"},"content":{"rendered":"
It turns out that welding (hot work) to secure a door to prevent theft of the ammonium nitrate was what set off the massive blast at the port of Beirut<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is no surprise.  Hot work has always been a leading cause of fires in industrial settings: <\/p><\/div>\n

Multiple sources have reported that the disastrous explosion at Port of Beirut was sparked by hot work at a warehouse where officials had stored 2,750 tonnes of confiscated ammonium nitrate and a cache of fireworks. In a new report, senior officials provided Reuters with additional details: early this year they had learned that one of the warehouse’s doors was broken, raising the risk that a malicious actor could steal dangerous explosives. The port’s welding contractors set off the cache while trying to repair the door to protect the cache. <\/p>\n

According to the report<\/a>, the security investigation that set this chain in motion began in January after the broken door and a large hole in the warehouse’s wall were discovered. On June 4 – six months later – state security forces ordered the port to guard the warehouse and make appropriate repairs. On August 4 – two months after the order – the port sent a team of Syrian workers to fix the warehouse. Sparks from their welding work ignited a supply of fireworks<\/a>, which had been stored next to the ammonium nitrate cache<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As an interesting aside, it appears that we still have no information as to who actually owned the ammonium nitrate which languished for years in a warehouse<\/a>: <\/p>\n

In the murky story of how a cache of highly explosive ammonium nitrate ended up on the Beirut waterfront, one thing is clear \u2014 no one has ever publicly come forward to claim it. <\/span>

<\/span>There are many unanswered questions surrounding last week\u2019s huge, deadly blast in the Lebanese capital, but ownership should be among the easiest to resolve.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>But Reuters interviews and trawls for documents across 10 countries in search of the original ownership of this 2,750-tonne consignment instead revealed an intricate tale of missing documentation, secrecy and a web of small, obscure companies that span the globe. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point, I’m pretty sure that there are 3 or 4 oligarchs crapping their pants over the possibility that they are tied to this disaster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It turns out that welding (hot work) to secure a door to prevent theft of the ammonium nitrate was what set off the massive blast at the port of Beirut. This is no surprise.  Hot work has always been a leading cause of fires in industrial settings: Multiple sources have reported that the disastrous explosion …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[368,505,588,417,378,471],"class_list":["post-176182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-corruption","tag-disaster","tag-fail","tag-international-commerce","tag-middle-east","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}