I've read and heard a lot of mis-information about this, this Link to the New York Times article from Yahoo sums up the multiple inactions that lead to this:
Blame for Beirut Explosion Begins With a Leaky, Troubled Ship
Here is a short version,
The Rhosus, which flew the flag of Moldova, arrived in Beirut in November 2013, two months after it left the Black Sea port of Batumi, Georgia. The ship was leased by Igor Grechushkin, a Russian businessman living in Cyprus.Prokoshev, the captain, joined the ship in Turkey after a mutiny over unpaid wages by a previous crew. Grechushkin had been paid $1 million to transport the high-density ammonium nitrate to the port of Beira in Mozambique, the captain said.
Senior customs officials wrote to the Lebanese courts at least six times from 2014 to 2017, seeking guidance on how to dispose of the ammonium nitrate, according to public records posted to social media by a Lebanese lawmaker, Salim Aoun.
“In view of the serious danger posed by keeping this shipment in the warehouses in an inappropriate climate,” Shafik Marei, the director of Lebanese customs, wrote in May 2016, “we repeat our request to demand the maritime agency to re-export the materials immediately.”
The customs officials proposed a number of solutions, including donating the ammonium nitrate to the Lebanese army or selling it to the privately owned Lebanese Explosives Co. Marei sent a second, similar letter a year later. The judiciary failed to respond to any of his pleas, the records suggested.
The ammonium nitrate was purchased by the International Bank of Mozambique for Fábrica de Explosivos de Moçambique, a firm that makes commercial explosives, according to Baroudi and Partners, a Lebanese law firm representing the ship’s crew, in a statement issued Wednesday.
Grechushkin, who was in Cyprus at the time and communicating by telephone, told the captain he didn’t have enough money to pay for passage through the Suez Canal. So he sent the ship to Beirut to earn some cash by taking on an additional cargo of heavy machinery.
But in Beirut, the machinery would not fit into the ship, which was about 30 or 40 years old, the captain said.
Then Lebanese officials found the ship unseaworthy and impounded the vessel for failing to pay the port docking fees and other charges. When the ship’s suppliers tried to contact Grechushkin for payment for fuel, food and other essentials, he could not be reached, having apparently abandoned the ship he had leased.
The crew’s departure left the Lebanese authorities in charge of the ship’s deadly cargo, which was moved to a storage facility known as Hangar 12, where it remained until the explosion Tuesday.
The general manager of Beirut’s port, Hassan Koraytem, said in an interview that customs and security officials made repeated requests to Lebanon’s courts to have the volatile material moved. “But nothing happened,” he said.
“We were told the cargo would be sold in an auction,” he added. “But the auction never happened, and the judiciary never acted.”
But for many Lebanese, the story is another sign of the chronic mismanagement of a ruling class that steered the country into a punishing economic crisis this year.
Captain Prokoshev, who said he is still owed $60,000 in wages, placed the fault with Grechushkin, and with Lebanese officials, who insisted on first impounding the boat and then on keeping the ammonium nitrate in the port “instead of spreading it on their fields.”
“They could have had very good crops instead of a huge explosion,” he said.
As for the Rhosus, Prokoshev learned from friends who sailed to Beirut that it had sunk in the harbor in 2015 or 2016 after taking water on board, he said.
No Politics here, so I wouldn't expect this to be Locked Down.
Like most when I first heard about this, I thought some type of bombing, terrorist, air strike ... etc.
You know the ole Would of, Could of, Should of ??
I've read that many of the surrounding Hangers that were destroyed held as much as 85% of The City's total grain supply. Now trying to deal with the homeless and hungry citizens. I believe this is a ticking time bomb.
Also I've read 20%+ of the casualties are children.
The USA, among the first to respond, has already dispatched three C-17's filled with med eqpt/supplies
Matthew 5:9Information
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