 It is August 2020, and the world news cycle has been interrupted from its COVID obsession, with one hell of a disaster. The virus, at least on UK news, is pushed down the reporting list, with parts of the city looking like a war has ravaged through it. Although looking like a bomb has gone off, this destruction has been caused by what to laymen may seem as something not very dangerous, a main ingredient in fertilizer. Although to you my loyal watchers, you know how deadly this stuff can actually be. No surprise that it piqued the interest of the news media. So today I probably don't need to introduce this video subject, but I will do anyway. This Saturday we are looking at the Beirut explosion, a ship and a harbour. The city of Beirut has been the proud owner of a port since the 1880s. It has a long and interesting history, with it playing an important role during the Lebanese Civil War. After the war, and as the city began to rebuild itself, and as the country started the process of reconciliation, the port would go on to become one of the largest and busiest on the eastern Mediterranean. So ships come and go, freight is loaded and unloaded. All pretty standard fare for a harbour. Another not unheard of thing is that of ship abandonment. Where vessels come into port, the owners disavow their property, and often the crew are left high and dry. The lucky ones usually get to bugger off, but sometimes some poor souls are left aboard. This would be the similar situation of a cargo ship entering the port of Beirut on the 21st November 2013. The ship's name is the MV Roses. She is a 1900 gross tonne cargo ship, built in 1986 in Naruto, Japan. Originally as a dredger, named Daifuku Maru No. 8, but over the years she changed hands, names and even changed use. To her final form as a cargo vessel. Her final owner was Russian businessman Igor Grechuskin from 2012, who was living in Limosol Cyprus. The MV Roses, as she was now known, flew the Moldovan flag. This was Grechuskin's first goer owning a ship, and it wasn't going to go so well. In July 2013 the MV Roses was held up by Spanish authorities in the port of Seville. She was falling apart and was not the most reliable. She was set sail once again and be chartered to transport 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate in bags in September 2013. The company that chartered the load was Rostavi Azot LLC, a Georgian fertiliser maker. It was to be shipped from Georgia to Fabrika de Explosifos Mozambique in Matola Mozambique. By the 27th of September the MV Roses was loaded up and ready to depart from Batami. She set sail, stopping at various ports along the way towards the Suez Canal. On the 21st of November 2013 she entered the port of Beirut. You see the ship was having financial issues, with worries the owner did not have enough funds to pay the Suez Canal toll. The ship's owner had found another shipment of cargo that would be dropped off along the way to Mozambique. Perfect. This would pay for that pesky Suez fee, but there was a small snack. The MV Roses important cargo hatches were rusty and weak and as captain Boris Prokazhev would later say to the BBC in an interview, the hatches were buckled and weak so we couldn't take it, we refused. You see refusing the cargo came with a fine, a fine the owner refused to pay and on top of that and port fees. As such the MV Roses was impounded, all but for the crew managed to flee the ship and escape back to their home country of Ukraine. The remaining crew including the captain would be stuck aboard the ship for around a year, when after selling some of its fuel to hire a lawyer managed to secure their own release. But the MV Roses stayed in port. The owner had claimed to be bankrupt and the cargo owners by now had lost interest. As such she stayed in Beirut. But not just the vessel stayed. Her explosive material was aboard and also sat there. The cargo was brought to shore in 2014 and placed in a building named Hangar 12. Over the years the cargo would sit and the MV Roses still moored in port would eventually take on water and sink. But although financially damaging for the ship's owner, the MV Roses' cargo was now one big headache for Lebanese customs officials. They had essentially now got to house a 2,750 ton bomb. Officials tried to find someone to offload the literal ticking time bomb off to, by sending out letters to judges requesting a resolution to the issue. In July 2020, Lebanon's High Defence Council informed President Aoun that there were dangerous materials in Beirut's port. He immediately ordered military and security agencies to do what was needed in order to remove them safely. But sadly the cargo would languish inside Hangar 12 until disaster would strike in August that same year. The explosion. It is the 4th of August 2020 and some welders are working on a hangar door repair. This was the same hangar that was the home to that couple of thousand tonnes of ammonium nitrate. The same building had also been home to a stash of fireworks. At around 1745 sparks landed on the pile of fireworks and this started a small fire. A team of firefighters were dispatched. Upon arrival just 10 minutes later the hangar was emitting strange noises and the fire was getting increasingly more intense. An explosion rang out at an estimated yield of between 1.5 and 2.5 tonnes of TNT. This was at 1807. Fireworks flashed and sparked as hangar 12 showed some signs of damage. 33 to 35 seconds later a much larger explosion erupted from the hangar. Some estimated it at 1.1 kilotons of TNT. The explosion could be felt some 150 miles away in Cyprus. The shockwave blasted out into the city of Beirut. An orangey red cloud descended upon the city. A common sight after an ammonium nitrate explosion. Next door to hangar 12 was the country's largest grain store. It was severely damaged leaving the country with less than one month supply of grain. Multiple buildings including three hospitals were obliterated. Buildings within a six mile radius suffered varying levels of damage leaving around 300,000 people displaced. Some of the buildings damaged even included cultural heritage sites, museums and embassies. Ships in the harbour suffered extensive damage including the cruise ship Orient Queen which was subsequently capsized. Anyone who could in the city helped by pulling people out of the damaged buildings and any working vehicle in and around the port area was used for emergency transport for injured people. In total 75 ambulances and 375 medics were dispatched to assist the injured and trapped. Local businesses offered food and medical supplies where they could and the international community arranged help for the city including the Netherlands, Turkey and the UK also sending search and rescue teams. A day after the explosion Prime Minister Hassan Dayeb declared a two-week state of emergency and the government launched an investigation into the explosion. Over the coming weeks debris would be disposed of by local residents as they tried to rebuild their lives and several hotels were opened up to house the displaced. Eventually the death toll would become apparent. A surprisingly low but still tragic number of roughly 218 with another 7,000 injured. Included in the dead was the original team of firefighters dispatched to the original firework fire. The city like many across the world at this point in 2020 was already feeling the financial pinch with Covid shortages. As such it hit the country hard financially with an estimated cost of around 15 billion US dollars. The investigation. Now usually at this point in the video I go over the investigation where those responsible are identified. But with the Beirut disaster the investigation was and is shall we say less than ideal. The government formed an investigative committee led by Prime Minister Hassan Dayeb. Although he resigned from his job on the 10th of August 2020. A day after the explosion 16 Beirut port officials who had overseen the storage of the material since 2014 were placed under house arrest. The number would increase to 25 within the first few days. Interpol also asked to detain the Russian ship's owner and the captain. And red notices were issued. Judge Fadi Sawan was appointed to head up the investigation. He started summoning various ministers and surprise surprise he would be relieved of his position in February 2021 with Tarik Baitel taking over the same month. The investigation would soon fall into infighting across the country's political lines. Prime Minister Dayeb and three former ministers were also charged with negligence over the Beirut port explosion. The investigation ground to a halt because higher ups in the Lebanese government were immune to investigations. And by early 2023 all suspects had been released. And he was looking like the investigation wouldn't carry on. But surprisingly Tarik Baitel resumed his work in March 2023. He would bring charges against Lebanon's most senior prosecutor. But so far it hasn't led to anything substantial. Meaning the investigation is still ongoing at the time of writing this script in mid-2023. The investigation or lack of has created concerns in the international community as it has highlighted issues with the Lebanese judiciary. The city would go on to rebuild but in 2022 the grain silo which had taken the significant portion of the explosion caught a light and collapsed. The disaster showed how deadly ammonium nitrate can be when ignored. Most of the players in their disaster had just not really appreciated the bomb they had in Hangar 12. And this is all too common as we see across the world with ammonium nitrate explosions. This is a plain difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attribution share alike licensed. Plain difficult videos are produced by me John in the currently, because it's night time, cold and dark southern corner of London UK. I have YouTube members and patrons so thank you very much for your financial support and the rest of you who tune in every week to listen and watch me talk. I have Instagram and Twitter where I post up behind the scenes photographs and the like. And I also have a second channel made by John. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching and Mr Music, play us out please.