[Mashiro]

According to several local news that I've read and heard on the radio the explosion was caused by a chemical substance called ammonium nitrate. This chemical substance is used in many ways to manufactor different kinds of explosives to simple stuff like fireworks and much more. It is highly explosive. Why did it explode? According to sources it was NOT stored properly and safely. We're talking about 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate that exploded due to wrong handling and storage. FYI: ammonium nitrate is also used for gardening as salt in fertilizers.

Sources:
- https://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/beirut...n-139.html (German - use Google Translate or similar)
- https://www.welt.de/vermischtes/article2...eldet.html (German - use Google Translate or similar)
- https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/05/middl...index.html
- https://www.cnet.com/how-to/beirut-explo...n-tuesday/
- https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-53664064

The exploision happened and actually as it usually is they can say it was caused by whatever they want but it should be very easy to prove a high level of ammonium nitrate and I assume that somewhere records exist that prove that ammonium nitrate was stored at that location. If you check the news article it looks like it was slowly "cooking" there. Like you know when chemicals are in their reaction phase they can cause really annoying and strong smell.

Could that have been avoided? Yes, I think it could have been. Proper storage, handling and most importantly maybe periodical monitoring.