In November 2013, a leaking and indebted Moldovan-flagged ship sailed into the Beirut port carrying 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate. The vessel, the Rhosus, had been leased by a Russian businessman living in Cyprus and was destined for Mozambique, where a commercial explosives factory had ordered the chemical but never paid for it.
Beirut was not on the itinerary but the ship’s captain was told to stop there to pick up additional cargo, heavy machinery bound for Jordan. But after two companies filed suit claiming they had not been paid for services they provided to the ship, Lebanese courts barred it from leaving.
The Russian businessman and the ship’s owner simply walked away, leaving the ship and its cargo in the custody of Lebanese authorities. It remains unclear who owned the ammonium nitrate and whether it was intended to end up in Beirut or Mozambique.
A few months later, in the first of many documented warnings to the government, a port security officer alerted the customs authority that the ship’s chemicals were “extremely dangerous” and posed “a threat to public safety.”
Soon after, a Beirut law firm seeking the repatriation of the Rhosus’s crew to Russia and Ukraine urged the port’s general manager to remove the cargo to avoid “a maritime catastrophe.” The law firm attached emails from the ship’s charterer warning about its “EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CARGO” and a 15-page Wikipedia entry cataloguing “ammonium nitrate disasters.”
Fearing the dilapidated ship would sink in the harbor, a judge ordered the port to offload the cargo. In October 2014, it was transferred to Hangar 12, a warehouse designated for hazardous materials.
Bags of ammonium nitrate were piled haphazardly near the fuel and fuses and on top of some of the fireworks.
“You’re putting all the ingredients into a box, and you’re playing a dangerous game,” Dr. Glumac said. “This is an accident waiting to happen.”
Then in late August, 2020 ...
In seconds, the explosion had punched through buildings for miles around, collapsing historic homes, reducing skyscrapers to hollow frames and scattering streets with the detritus of countless upended lives. The blast killed more than 190 people, injured 6,000 and caused billions of dollars in damage.
Government dysfunction had already brought Lebanon to the brink of ruin, with an economy on the verge of collapse, shoddy infrastructure and a persistent antigovernment protest movement. The explosion overshadowed all that, raising alarm about the system’s inadequacy in a vivid and frightening new way.
The port is emblematic of everything the Lebanese protesters say is wrong with their government, with dysfunction and corruption hard-wired into nearly every aspect of the operation.
Judge Oueidat, the public prosecutor, said the military and the customs authority had the legal authority to remove the ammonium nitrate.
But when it was brought to their attention, neither did.
The port authority asked the Lebanese Army to take the chemicals in 2016, but the army chief, Gen. Jean Kahwaji, said in a written response that the military was “not in need of” ammonium nitrate. He suggested that the port offer it to a commercial explosives manufacturer or “return it to its country of origin.”
At least six times in three years, top customs officials sent letters to the judiciary about the cargo, noting “the serious danger posed by keeping this shipment in the warehouses” and asking the court to remove it “to preserve the safety of the port and its workers.”
The devastated port in August.
But the letters were sent to the wrong office, according to lawyers and judicial officials, and the judges never issued new orders.
In 2018, the Rhosus sank in the harbor, where it remains.
The cargo remained in Hangar 12.
The Hanger door was damaged and had been reported numerous times as a security risk.
Then on Aug. 4, the government finally acted, sending a team of welders to fix the hangar.
It remains unclear whether their work accidentally lit the fire that caused the explosion that same day but that is the most likely scenario.
“If there was welding going on in the vicinity, that'll do it,” said Van Romero, a physics professor and explosives expert at New Mexico Tech.
“You have all the ingredients.”
C/P
By Ben Hubbard, Maria Abi-Habib, Mona El-Naggar, Allison McCann, Anjali Singhvi, James Glanz and Jeremy White