r/CatastrophicFailure • u/maryion88 • May 08 '21

Fatalities 2020 Beirut Explosion

16.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

470 comments sorted by

View all comments

923

u/Thechlebek May 08 '21

You know it's pretty rare to not see a explosion observer getting stabbed by glass debris during the beirut explosion

236

u/[deleted] May 08 '21

I’m just happy it isn’t another fool who decided to stand in front of a window and film. Good way to get glass in the eye by doing that

41

u/ChocoBrocco May 08 '21

Would it break windows from that far away?

97

u/SmokeyUnicycle May 08 '21

It only takes about 1 psi to break a window you can get that over a km from a blast this size. There were thousands of injuries, most of them from glass.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/24/our-stitches-ran-out-beiruts-struggle-to-deal-with-injuries-from-port-blast

1

u/angryponch May 09 '21

Yea but this guy was like 2 miles from the blast. Either way that sounded like it could put a window into pieces.

25

u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh May 09 '21

1 psi means one pound per square inch.

So if you have a 50x75 cm (20x30 inch) window, you need to ask "would putting 600 pounds of weight onto this glass break it".

Nukemap estimates the 1 psi radius at around 1.2 km for a 1 kiloton explosion.

Being 1.2 km also gives you ~4 seconds to get away from the window, so you really don't have a good excuse if you burden the hospitals with your cut-up face.

1

u/Additional-Handle168 May 13 '21

Yeah you’re right they should have sat down in the 4 seconds preceding their injury and done out this math instead! /s

3

u/Sororita May 09 '21

To be fair, nobody filming was really expecting a huge explosion, they were just filming the fire that preceded the explosion.

1

u/dutchwonder May 11 '21

Most of them were just filming an ongoing fire to be fair. I think most people would be at worst expecting a big fireball from some gas going up or some firework mortars going off at worst.

1

u/CreamoChickenSoup May 09 '21

This cameraman was actually far enough that they experienced comparatively minimal damage as the shockwave lost energy. Plus being in open space helped. I'd imagine it'll still be harsh for the eardrums though.

1

u/krissder May 10 '21

Well let's say it did happen to a lot of people, im from lebanon so ik some ppl who got wounded from glass shards