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Comment by yodon | Hacker News Reader

There is no need to hunt for a conspiracy theory. Once the decision was made by their judiciary to store thousands of tons of explosives near a major population center, the important question ceases to be about what random unexpected event happens to be the one that sets it off. The probability of disaster was clearly going to integrate to one over some timescale. The failure was systemic. The tragedy was inevitable. It's actually kind of amazing it took this long to happen.

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There is no indication that it was "the judiciary's decision" to store it "near a major population center".

That's a story floated by the head of customs to try and shift the blame to the judiciary. But there is no evidence for it, and there is much evidence against it.

Source: The court documents released by journalists Riad Kobeisyi and Dima Sadek.

I think the storage was one of convenience. Ship was at the docks, so store it at the docks. Who would have thought it would have taken 6 years? The next problem is this 2750 tons of material. You're talking around 70 semi loads to carry it all off. This has to be funded by someone, who?

I’m sure they could have destroyed the fireworks and sold the fertilizer to some farmers if they really wanted to. That would quickly pay for itself.

I still can't wrap my head around this, even if you can't sell it you can still find ways to get rid of both.

I mean, at the bare minumum someone must have been willing to take this stuff off the states hands at least for free, right? A Google search says 500$ a ton for it

Very few people need explosive grade ammonium nitrate in this quantity and also prefer a source that has no provenance, and pay some fraction of 1.3 Million list price over their established supply chain.

And in fact, the judge ordered the government to either sell it off or put it in safe storage... about 6 years ago.

spot on.

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