A high explosive is defined by the speed of the shockwave front when it detonates. Not by how high you can pile it up.
ANFO is a low explosive.
Anfo dust in the air may ignite and perhaps explode but it takes a high explosive trigger and mixing in diesel fuel to the amonium nitrate to make it sensitive enough to detonate.
There are three states of explosives burning. Think of gasoline, put a match to a teaspoon full and it will burn as a smokey tki torch.
Put a teaspoon in a trash can and it will explode.
Vaporize a teaspoon in a good air fuel ratio and compress it in a sealed cylinder and it will detonate.
0 foot per second, burn
25 foot per second ,explode,
1700 foot per second, detonate.
That was not an amonium nitrate explosive,
That was a detonation. And to detonate you have to mix the fuel in with the oxidizer and make ANFO.
It was an ammo dump.
Perfectly said...as I recall, dynamite, Hercules 65%, burns at a rate of 20K feet per second...about the same rate as det-cord.
See my Post #37
Also, I have a local Lebanese friend who has a brother and sister-in-law living in Beirut. He has been in touch with them...his SIL’s house was destroyed.
His brother said that it is well known that this warehouse facility was being used to store and modify rockets and rocket fuel and that Hezbollah had just received a shipment of rockets from Iran.
Don’t know if true or not...but sounds about right.