AMMUNITION and explosives safety standards were not met when authorities stored 98 containers of munitions at the Evangelos Florakis naval base in 2009.
This, among other things, was one of the conclusions of an 11-page classified report prepared by a team of Greek experts dispatched to the island on the afternoon of July 11 following the fatal explosion.
The report, published by daily Politis yesterday, said the cause of the fire in one of the 98 containers was the deterioration, destabilisation and decomposition of the gunpowder stored inside. This then resulted in the formation of explosive gases which continually increased. Gradually due to the increase in temperature the pressure inside the container also increased. This led to the expansion of the container walls which in turn led to combustion causing the gases to self-ignite, the report said. The rapid rise in temperature sped up the decomposition and subsequent self-ignition of the gunpowder in the remaining containers.
According to the experts the fire – which resulted in a blast creating a crater 60 metres in diameter and 15 metres deep – had originated in the containers and nowhere else. The report said producing a crater of that size would take the equivalent of 421 tonnes of TNT.
The Greek report also stipulated that the safety measures to store and maintain the explosive cargo had not been implemented.
According to Ammunition and Explosives Safety Standards the containers should never have been stacked together without the necessary corridors between them to allow for their inspection.
Moreover the report highlighted authorities’ failure to adhere to the Quantity-Distance (QD) criteria, which in this case should have been 7.5 metres. The QD criteria represent physical limits which cannot be breached without incurring risks, and acceptance of these risks at the appropriate command level. QD also applies the cardinal principle of explosives safety which is to expose the minimum number of people to the minimum amount of explosives for the minimum amount of time.
The report also found that the expansion of one of the containers which was noted by naval base personnel on July 4 (exactly a week before the blast) was not taken into serious consideration. The team of experts said the only reason an explosion had been averted on that day was because the door of the container in question had opened which released the gases that had formed due to the deterioration of the explosive substance.
Finally the necessary safety precautions were not followed regarding the evacuation of personnel and equipment in case of a fire in an area where explosives are kept, the report said.
As well as the report’s four main conclusions the experts said gunpowder should not be kept in temperatures higher than 30 degrees centigrade as it can cause deterioration. Moreover the explosives should not be stored in containers for longer than 90 days and even then only under certain conditions, the report said. Storing the explosives outdoors had also been a mistake, it added.
The report also referred to how the fire services had been sent in to put out the blaze. The experts said fire services personnel should not be exposed to unnecessary danger and that they were required to keep a standard distance from a blaze depending on the amount of explosive substances stored at a particular site. For example if explosives do not exceed 50,000 pounds then fire fighters should keep back 1,000 feet, while over 100,000 pounds of explosives warrants a distance of over 2,000 feet until they explode. Because gunpowder and propellants, which was among the munitions stored in the 98 containers, ignite rapidly there is considered no time to save the particular site, the experts pointed out.
