Lebanon - not siege related.

[conal]

2,750 tonnes. Holy shyt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ammonium_nitrate_disasters

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Beirut_explosions

You can see the water vapour compressing in the advancing hemisphere of the explosion.

May be that the Fire fighters should have let it burn. (2nd Paragraph) An example of where doing nothing was better than doing something. Especially in light of the cascade failure of the Lebanese Govt in dealing with the material in the first place.

Apuleius' The Golden Ass should be compulsory reading for Govt Officals.

In the second case, the explosion results from a fire that spreads into the ammonium nitrate (AN) itself (Texas City, Brest, Tianjin, Beirut), or to a mixture of an ammonium nitrate with a combustible material during the fire.

The fire must be confined at least to a degree for successful transition from a fire to an explosion (a phenomenon known as "deflagration to detonation transition", or DDT). Pure, compact AN is stable and very difficult to initiate. However, there are numerous cases when even impure AN did not explode in a fire.

Poor bastards.