These days no national government
should probably have to worry about any other thing than to preserve its
country against the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But life is never simple, and
there are always other crises that will demand attention. This much is true of
the Middle Eastern nation of Lebanon as anywhere else. Aside from the
coronavirus, the country was reeling from an economic meltdown that has seen
the poverty rate actually reach to over half the population percentage, caused
by outrages such as a Central Bank-run pyramid scam and proposed taxes on
things like voice app messaging. It seemed things could not get worse.
But as Tuesday, August 4 proved
according to BBC, it actually can for
Lebanon. That day, its capital city of Beirut was rocked by a massive explosion
emanating from a fire that broke out at the Port Area at around 6PM local time
(3PM GMT). The blaze began at a grain elevator in the port complex, the second
largest such structure in the city. But before anyone knew what was happening a
catastrophic boom sent shockwaves across Beirut, overturning cars and wrecking
building walls. The worst part was the casualties, with a minimum 100 people
killed and over 4,000 injured.
Social media in the Middle East
abounded with footage of the mushroom cloud from the fire that transitioned
into the explosion, which tended to sweep smartphone camera-users filming the
action off their feet. Graphic depictions of people bathed red with blood
walking the streets of Beirut were also in evidence, even as firefighters tried
to contain the flames in Beirut port and first responders tended to the
wounded. Even so, the casualty count was so immense that the city’s hospitals
alone could barely contain them all. It was a “huge catastrophe” as stated by
Lebanon Red Cross chief George Kettani.
The cause of the fire and
explosion was later revealed in a public address by the Lebanese President
Michael Aoun. Apparently the Port of Beirut area had a warehouse containing
ammonium nitrate, a chemical compound used in the manufacture of either plant
fertilizer or explosives. There was about 2,750 tons of the chemical stored
there, all of which were impounded by the government ever since 2014, and their
detonation was equated to the force of, at maximum, three thousand pounds of
TNT. The investigation is now trying to determine how the ammonium nitrate was
ignited.
Eyewitness accounts claim that
the Beirut explosion was so powerful that the shockwaves were felt in the
island nation of Cyprus, just to the west of the Lebanon shore in the
Mediterranean Sea. What is known is that this new crisis on top of the economy
and COVID-19 is not what the Lebanese government wants to confront right about
now.
Closer to home as The Manila Bulletin tells it, the
Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has confirmed that at least two Filipinos
are among those killed by the blast, with a further eight wounded and 12 more reported
as missing.
Image courtesy of Popular Mechanics
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