Sri Lanka faces 'worst-ever beach pollution' from burning ship | Hacker News Reader

Sri Lanka faces 'worst-ever beach pollution' from burning ship

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86 pointsrguiscard12 comments

Sri Lankan here, and we are very worried about this. There were photos of giant eel fish dead on the beach. I wouldn't be surprised if there's an acid rain in coming days.

At one point, it looks as if every toxic and harmful chemical that you can think about, they put them on a ship, and then just burnt it in spite.

The country is in a lot of debt because of the pandemic, lack of tourism, and the Chinese debt trap. One politician even made a note that it was a good thing that happened, because the country would get some financial boost from the insurance/fine.

We are rightfully enraged.

> the fire was caused by a nitric acid leak that the crew had been aware of since May 11.

What percentage of environmental catastrophes are known problems where people just ignored some issue? Seems like quite a few.

I suspect your sentiment generalizes very well. Most problems of all kinds have mundane contributing factors that nobody thought were important at the time.

“I’ll patch that server next week”

“One more donut won’t make a difference”

“I’ll skip this valve check today; it’s been fine every day for years”

“A few extra miles in the car can’t pollute that much”

I think what you're trying to define by example may just be Normalization of Deviance [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance

I suspect they really couldn't do anything much about it, given the scale of these things. It's one container buried amongst thousands of others.

They don't check the cargo?

In any case, I wonder if it's possible to insist on deposits for hazardous materials, proportional to damage if leaked - and harsh fines/sentences for smuggling.

They asked to unload the leaking container in Qatar then Hazira, but the request was denied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Press_Pearl#Fire (references 10 & 11).

Wow, how RFNA was on a container ship to begin with?

That's literally a rocket oxidiser.

> Wow, how RFNA was on a container ship to begin with?

obvious speculation: cargo?

The article just said "nitric acid." Even ordinary azeotropic nitric acid can cause fires if it leaks.

There was a us navy ship (Bonneham Richard) that burned in the San Diego naval shipyard last year. From 30 miles away the stench of burning plastic was intense and nauseating. It lasted days before they could extinguish it. In that case they had all the resources of the navy to deal with it. I can imagine it's much worse in Sri lanka.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bonhomme_Richard_(LHD-6)

I'm far less concerned about the plastic pellets than whatever else was released in the fire, the majority of it going into the atmosphere.

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