Greek Naval Base-Power Station Exploded by Ammo Fire

[Sea Skimmer]

Cyprus: Navy chief killed by base munitions blast
Investigators search inspect a damaged guardpost destroyed by the explosion at the Evangelos Florakis naval base (11 July 2011) Debris was blown as far as 3km (2 miles) from the naval base by the blast

The head of Cyprus' navy, Andreas Ioannides, was among 12 people killed when seized containers of gunpowder exploded its main base.

The commander of the Evangelos Florakis base, Lambros Lambrou, also died.

The defence minister and military chief have resigned over the incident, which officials said occurred after a bush fire ignited the explosives.

A government spokesman has said a recent meeting concluded that safety at the site needed to be improved.

But the recommendations had not yet been implemented, he added.

The comments came after Ioannides' son said senior officials had repeatedly ignored his warnings about the condition of the containers.
'Biblical dimensions'

More than 90 containers of gunpowder had been kept in the open at the Evangelos Florakis base since they were confiscated by the Cypriot authorities from a ship intercepted in 2009 sailing from Iran to Syria in violation of United Nations sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Early on Monday, firefighters were called to tackle a small fire in the storage area. At 0550 (0250 GMT), there was a massive explosion.
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Greek newspaper photographer Stephanos Kouratzis describes the impact of the blast

The blast killed Mr Ioannides and Mr Lambrou, as well as four other navy personnel and six firefighters, a police and military statement said. Sixty-two people were wounded, two of them seriously.

The shockwave destroyed the walls of two multi-storey buildings on the base, and generator buildings and fuel tanks at the nearby Vassilikos power plant. Debris was blown as far as 3km (2 miles) from the base and hundreds of trees were flattened.

Nearly all the windows in the village of Zygi were blown out, while roof tiles were torn off and windows broken in the village of Mari.

"My tractor jumped about half a metre in the air," farmer Nicos Aspros told the Reuters news agency. "There isn't a house in the community which hasn't been damaged."

Commerce Minister Antonis Paschalides said the damage to the power station, which produces 60% of the country's electricity, was a "tragedy of Biblical dimensions".

The blast caused widespread power cuts, and the electricity authority has warned that the plant will not immediately come back online.

Government spokesman Stefanos Stefanou said there was no risk of further explosions, and that foreign experts would be called in to help the police and armed forces, the National Guard, investigate the incident.

The government had declared three days of official mourning, and the state would pay for the funerals of the victims, he added.

Asked about reports that navy commanders had expressed concerns over the safety of the gunpowder storage area, Mr Stefanou said officials had met last week at the defence ministry to discuss the matter.

"Decisions were taken on protecting the material, but unfortunately this was not possible as time ran out," he added.

Earlier, Ioannides' son told CyBC television that his father had warned that the gunpowder containers had been had become "warped" because they had remained exposed to the elements since being confiscated.

Mari's community leader, Nicos Asprou, told reporters that the community had not been told gunpowder was being stored at the base.

President Demetris Christofias meanwhile accepted the resignations of Defence Minister Costas Papacostas and National Guard chief of staff, Petros Tsalikidis. They will remain in post until replacements are named.

"I want to express my sympathy and condolences to the families of the people who died while selflessly performing their duty," Mr Christofias said. "The material damage can be repaired, but lives do not come back."

So basically every in the South Cyprus government just ignored constant complaints from the navy that keeping no less then 98 shipping containers loaded with seized Iranian ammunition and bulk explosives in a giant pile in the middle of a small naval base about 500 meters from the island’s largest power station and 600 meters from civilian homes was unsafe. Imagine that? Low and behold it all finally exploded after a small wildfire reached the site.

Now a 12 people are dead and the 220Mw power plant, only completed in 2009, looks like smoking Swiss cheese, it will take months to fix. Makes Russia look downright competent.
http://img.ibtimes.com/www/data/images/ ... cyprus.jpg

[Pelranius]

Umm, shouldn't the title read Cypriot Naval base? I don't mean to be pretentious or anal.

I would exactly like to know if Cyprus has some sort of disposal system for spare ammunition?

[cosmicalstorm]

Holy fuck
Is it coldhearted of me to hope that someone or some CCTV-system captured this on film?

[SirNitram]

By all the dark gods. What sort of idiots were in charge, that they just went 'oh, a hundred containers of live ammo? Leave it by the power plant.' and wrote it off? Ammunition is never a toy(Exception: Nerf), and this just shows you can't just pile it somewhere.

[Narkis]

This seems like a colossal fuck-up by the government. Leaks from internal meetings show that the Minister of Defense and Chief of the Army, both of whom resigned, complained that it would be much too dangerous to store them ever since they were seized in 2009. They suggested destroying them, but the Cypriot President refused, preferring either to use them to make ammo (impossible since Cyprus has no arms industry of note), or sell them. The base commander who died has been screaming about them for months, possibly years. And the government had a meeting discussed how to improve safety of storage only a couple weeks ago.

Also, this: http://www.politis-news.com/cgibin/hweb ... V=articles
Small explosions have been noted on that container since July 4th.

[Sea Skimmer]

… they stacked the containers. That’s even worse then I ever imagined. Everyone in charge should be shot, a trial would only waste paper. Discuss how to improve safety? Do fucking anything at all other then what you are doing? Even just laying out side by side on the ground with gaps and bulldozing some dirt around them would have been 100 times safer.

[JME2]

I think we have the candidates for the 2011 Darwin Award.

Seriously, this is nuts. Who the hell thought it was a brilliant idea to stack live ammo that close to a power plant?

[Narkis]

… they stacked the containers. That’s even worse then I ever imagined. Everyone in charge should be shot, a trial would only waste paper. Discuss how to improve safety? Do fucking anything at all other then what you are doing? Even just laying out side by side on the ground with gaps and bulldozing some dirt around them would have been 100 times safer.

Not pictured: The other 90 containers stored in the area in a similar manner. It's a miracle only two of them exploded.

I think we have the candidates for the 2011 Darwin Award.

Seriously, this is nuts. Who the hell thought it was a brilliant idea to stack live ammo that close to a power plant?

Unfortunately, they don't qualify for a Darwin Award. The people who died were those who screamed at their superiors for the situation, and were denied men and funding to fix it. Those responsible were safe in the capital.

As for the who... That seems to be the Cypriot President.

[Sea Skimmer]

Not pictured: The other 90 containers stored in the area in a similar manner. It's a miracle only two of them exploded.

Two stacks or two containers? Last media reports I saw said it had all gone up, but nobody seems certain of anything.

[Narkis]

Everything was destroyed, but only two containers did the exploding. That's what I've heard, at least. I can't find a source at the moment to confirm it.

[cosmicalstorm]

Well, it seems this fuckup may lead to something like a general bankruptcy of Cyprus

Orphanides: act now or face EU bailout

CYPRUS’ economy is in a state of emergency comparable to 1974 and is facing an EU bailout unless drastic action is taken to deal with the impact of an explosion which decimated its largest power station, Central Bank governor Athanasios Orphanides warned yesterday.

"To avoid the worst, including admission into (a) support mechanism and all that that entails for the economy ... further and more drastic measures must be taken immediately," Orphanides said in a July 18 letter sent to Cypriot president Demetris Christofias and copied to political party leaders.

Already under market pressure because of its links to debt-laden Greece, economists have warned the island could face a bill of up to €1 billion after the blast a week ago knocked out over half of its power supply.

"Weighing all the facts, the unfavourable international environment, the difficulties in resorting to external borrowing and the additional economic impact from the recent events, I believe the economy is in a state of emergency, comparable to that of 1974," Orphanides said, referring to the Turkish invasion and its aftermath.

It is the first time Orphanides, a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank, has suggested Cyprus may need to enter a support mechanism, even though the island's borrowing costs had been rising before the blast.

A copy of the one-page letter obtained by Reuters was forwarded to Christofias before an emergency meeting with party leaders last Monday to assess the impact of the July 11 blast.

The explosion of confiscated Iranian munitions last Monday left 13 people dead and triggered rolling power cuts on the island.

Calls have also mounted for the resignation of Christofias, who has seen his foreign and defence ministers quit in the wake of the disaster.

With a budget deficit of 5.1 per cent of GDP and overall public debt of around 60 per cent, Cyprus is in much better fiscal shape than eurozone bailout recipients Greece, Ireland and Portugal.

But financial markets are worried the island, whose annual output of around €17.4 billion is just 0.2 per cent of the eurozone economy, will be downed by its dependence on a Greek economy and banking sector struggling with its debt crisis.

Publication of the letter came as the government appears to have finalised a raft of short to mid-term measures – discussed before the disaster -- in a bid to shore up the economy.

The measures provide for, among others, savings in government benefits worth up to €260 million in 2012, scrapping vacant positions in the wider public sector to save €47 million in the next three years and cutting the number of civil servants by 5,000 in the next five years. The latter would save €60 million in the next three years.

The measures are expected to be discussed tomorrow by the national council.

Ruling AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou thanked Orphanides for his interest, adding that they were fully aware of the situation and the need to take measures.

Main measures currently being discussed by the government and political parties, and the expected savings if they are implemented, published yesterday on financial news portal Stockwatch.

http://www.cyprus-mail.com/economi/orph ... t/20110721

[Sea Skimmer]

I’m not really too surprised by that, this is a crippling loss of power and you’d need about forty of the largest portable generators available in the world to make up the difference at a great cost in material and fuel. I’m not sure you could even get that many 5 megawatt plus generators at any price in less then months. Without a measure like that the power crisis will last at least a year judging by the damage; and restoring full power production might take considerably longer. It depends a great deal on damage to some specific components you can’t really see in long distance photos, and if they’d be able to restart one of the gas turbines without repairing the regenerative steam system.

[Narkis]

Sorry for the thread necro, but there's an update. Source: http://www.sigmalive.com/simerini/polit ... taz/410583 (Sadly, in Greek)

Basically, the logs of a meeting between the Cypriot and Syrian presidents were leaked to the press. In this meeting, the Syrian president was repeatedly assured that the ammo would be returned either to Syria or Iran at the first opportunity. Which explains why the Cypriot president steadfastly refused to dispose of the ammo as the US and EU asked, or give it to them for disposal, and why the were kept like this on a naval base instead of moving them to a more secure location. So that they could be given back stealthily at a moment's notice.

[Thanas]

So wait, Cyprus went behind the back of the EU to collude with the Syrians?

[Sea Skimmer]

Well, that would complete the link in the chain of the stupidity pretty nicely. I didn’t bother to mention it since thread interest was low, but I did eventually find out some of was said to be in the containers. Mainly a whole lot of mortar ammo of 82mm, 120mm and 160mm caliber plus 125mm tank shells as well as bulk powder charges and bulk demolition charges. It seems however that the contents of a third of the containers were never even told to the local troops of the naval base and opening them was forbidden. At least some were believed to be entirely filled with modern anti tank missiles, and debris after the blast suggested other weapons might have been inside too. Whole containers of missiles would have made the shipment very valuable and make it unsurprising that the owners would want it back.

Damage to the power plant will cost 700 million Euros to repair.

[Thanas]

Good luck getting the EU to pay for that after the latest revelations.

[Lord Zentei]

Cyprus has a GDP of about €16 billion. This fuck-up therefore amounts to at least 4.4% of that GDP. Just wow.

[Narkis]

So wait, Cyprus went behind the back of the EU to collude with the Syrians?

Pretty much. The representative of the Cypriot government refused to "confirm or deny the authenticity" of this document, but he said that this discussion was "a diplomatic maneuver at a difficult time" when the Republic of Cyprus was trying to convince Syria to stop a ferry line between Syria and the state of Northern Cyprus, and "maintain friendly relations with Syria and Iran." He also spent a lot time accusing the other parties and the media of trying to pin the blame on the president, instead of working together to overcome this crisis, but that's kinda irrelevant.

Sea Skimmer, the reports I'd heard mentioned mostly bullets, mortar ammo and few tank shells in these containers. Yours make much more sense.