BEIRUT'S APOCALYPTIC FERTILIZER EXPLOSION HAS SHATTERED THE HUB OF THE LEVANTINE GRAIN TRADE
This BBC clip is like watching a Tom Clancy film in slow motion :
If there's an element of the sardonic in this precis, it's because I had to testify to Congress after the 1993 World Trade Center fertilizer bombing was mirrored in the 1995 Oklahoma City Federal Building attack. Here's the op-ed that precipitated my testimony:
Play it backward from the mushroom cloud, and behold :
- Shocked cries of "Allahu Akbar!" as Beirut's waterfront dissapears inside a spherical condensation cloud
- In a literal flash, the deflagation wave accelerates into a shock front that detonates kilotons of fertilizer in miliseconds
- Succesive piles of ammonium nitrate decompose, releasing enough heat, to launch a a huge red cloud of nitrogen oxides.
- Explosions roll through rows of hazardous material warehouses after an initial sky high blast.
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| THERE GOES THEIR DAILY BREAD |
The New York Times May 16, 1995 Op-Ed
Doom at 8 Cents A Pound
BYLINE: By Russell Seitz
DATELINE: CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
It takes a great deal of fertilizer to feed the world. Ammonium nitrate, made by the millions of tons out of air and water, and readily available in farm supply stores, is equally serviceable as an explosive and a plant food. Yet it was sold without question -- until the Federal building was bombed in Oklahoma City. Now the victims of that bombing have sued the manufacturer of the ammonium nitrate, asking why, since it can be rendered harmless, they were put at risk.
Despite the carnage, this cornucopia of destructive potential flows on. Ten dollars buys all the ammonium nitrate you can carry. It can cost more to rent a truck than to build a bomb. Last year, more than four billion pounds was legally sold in the United States -- enough for literally a million explosions as powerful as the one that shattered the Federal building..
Despite the carnage, this cornucopia of destructive potential flows on. Ten dollars buys all the ammonium nitrate you can carry. It can cost more to rent a truck than to build a bomb. Last year, more than four billion pounds was legally sold in the United States -- enough for literally a million explosions as powerful as the one that shattered the Federal building..
Global control of explosives made from just air, water and energy is a problem that security analysts are tempted to toss on the too-hard pile. But the domestic supply of ammonium nitrate could be defused by following Britain and Germany, where only blended fertilizers are sold; the producers put in inert potassium and phosphorus compounds to make the ammonium nitrate content unexplodable.
Europe learned the hard way. In 1921, a multimillion-pound detonation obliterated the Rhineland town of Oppau, killing 560. From Halifax, Nova Scotia (about 3,400 dead) to Texas City (about 1,200 dead), memories still linger of the shiploads that exploded, bringing a taste of Hiroshima to our shores.
But despite heroic efforts to halt proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the shipping of ammonium nitrate continues. It should worry regulators of nuclear materials and nerve gas that at 8 cents a pound an atom bomb's worth of explosive yield is appallingly cheap -- Hiroshima and Nagasaki for half the price of a small corporate jet! Explosive power enough to refight World War II is on the loose -- and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty is powerless even to address it.
In the absence of constant vigilance, any terrorist organization with enough money could load an aging supertanker with a quarter-megaton of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. It is easy to dismiss such a virtual H-bomb as a novelistic device -- until one goes off in New York Harbor.
Cold war reflexes die hard. A real danger resides in the thousands of barge and trainloads of ammonium nitrate that ply the nation's waterways and rails unguarded every year. There is little to prevent them from being hijacked and to defend the cities they transit. .
Cold war reflexes die hard. A real danger resides in the thousands of barge and trainloads of ammonium nitrate that ply the nation's waterways and rails unguarded every year. There is little to prevent them from being hijacked and to defend the cities they transit. .
Last year, enough detonating cord was stolen to set off thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil; at ground zero, all kilotons, nuclear and conventional, are created equal.
Farming methods change slowly, but other nitrogen fertilizers already compete with ammonium nitrate and could displace it entirely. The Department of Agriculture, which has agents at the county level, could assist by deploying taggants -- trace elements or layered particles that can be put in fertilizer and can be read like bar codes to connect terrorists to the source of the fertilizer. Although the fertilizer industry may object to the expense, few in Oklahoma City are likely to protest.
Though Hollywood's glut of erupting office buildings may trouble the nation's psyche even more than talk radio does, it remains hard to imagine anything transcending what we witnessed in Oklahoma City. Yet that act's very enormity testifies that we must exercise the imagination of disaster -- or endure unending surprise.
Russell Seitz is an associate of Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies.
Copyright 1995 The New York Times Company
