‘End of the world’: Countdown to Beirut’s devastating blast

BEIRUT (AP) — The 10 firefighters who received the call shortly before 6 p.m. — about a big fire at the nearby port of Beirut — could not know what awaited them. The brigade of nine men and one woman could not know about the stockpile of ammonium nitrate warehoused since 2013 along a busy motorway, in the heart of a densely populated residential area — a danger that had only grown with every passing year. They and nearly all the population of Beirut were simply unaware. They were not privy to the warnings authorities had received, again and again, and ignored: ammonium nitrate is highly explosive, used in fertilizer and sometimes to build bombs. The stockpile was degrading; something must be...