Lebanon, four years ago the explosion at the port of Beirut: the story of those who were there that day and were saved because they were near the refrigerator, far from the window

BEIRUT – Four years have passed since August 4, 2020 when there was one of the most terrible non-nuclear explosions ever to occur on Earth that devastated the port and part of Beirut, causing the death of 235 people, 6,500 injured, 300 thousand displaced and approximately 3 billion in damages. Anyone who lived in Beirut, a wonderful and damned city, remembers where they were and what they were doing at 6:08 pm that day. In an instant, we were all violently catapulted into a crossroads in our lives. On one side, those who lived and still tell the miracle that made them emerge unscathed, on the other, those who live in their flesh and in their soul the tragedy that upset their life and that of their loved ones.

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I am part of the group of miracle workers. I was in the kitchen talking on the phone, the heat had brought me to the refrigerator. The first explosion stops me and saves my life. Those few moments of stillness prevent me from being in front of the large French window when the world seems to fall. Before the bang the glass shatters into a thousand pieces and the fragments fly off like bullets, I watch them motionless pass a few centimeters from my face. An unreal silence immediately falls, broken after a few seconds by the screams of an entire city. I run to see if everyone inside the house is okay, yes no one seems affected, my partner, who belongs to the generation that lived through the civil war, says it is a bombing and that we should run to the garage. We don’t do it, her mother can’t move and we certainly can’t abandon her.

We wait for the second “bomb”, but instead silence falls. We wait for the next bomb, but instead an incomprehensible and unreal calm follows. We can’t understand what happened and about ten minutes later the first news reports speak of an accident and, absurdly, reassure us. We are surrounded by debris, but we are alive and we are not under a bombing. A couple of hours later the reporter’s curiosity takes over and in defiance of any safety regulations I go out. The part of the city towards the port is a pile of rubble, photos of the bombing of Dresden come to mind. Chaos reigns supreme, people desperately looking for a place to take an injured person or, even more desperately, trying to return home or contact their families. Dust is everywhere and the city is enveloped in a soundtrack of sirens, horns and the sound of glass that continues to shatter.

All the doors of my palace houses were torn down. When I returned to my building I found all the doors, even those that were not torn off by the explosion, wide open and all my neighbors were working together to make the stairs accessible and to try to fix the house of old Abou Fadi, the “grandfather” of the building. He lives alone and his house was hit hard, tonight he will sleep, but in reality he will do so for at least two months, at Madame Ketty’s house, who lives on the floor above since her house, exposed in another direction, suffered less damage. Abou Fadi is a Shiite Muslim and Madame Ketty is an Orthodox Christian widow, I think they never had great relationships, but now they are two inhabitants of Beirut and they help each other without asking questions.

Solidarity and collaboration. They have been the constant that I have seen throughout the long weeks that were necessary to clean the houses, the streets, to reopen the shops and to welcome those who had lost everything. Four years have passed, and the figures of the disaster, which we report below, still make one shudder. Lebanon and the Lebanese in this period have been forced to survive an unprecedented economic crisis, the Covid epidemic and the almost total paralysis of politics and institutions. Suffice it to say that since October 2022 the Lebanese Republic has not had a President. Finally, the list has also been joined by what observers persist in calling “low intensity warfare” on the border with Israel. A low intensity that in 300 days has caused almost 600 deaths, many civilians, about 100,000 displaced people and more than a billion dollars in damages. A conflict that seems increasingly close to spreading, rather than stopping.

The urgency of finding out who is responsible. All this, however, should not justify the failure to search for those responsible for August 4, a search that the Government effectively blocked in December 2022. For this reason, recently 18 Civil Society Organizations and the relatives of the victims have appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council. “We, the survivors and families of the victims of the Beirut port explosion of August 2020, and Lebanese and international organizations, write to you to urge you to support a resolution, or at least a joint statement, calling for the establishment of an international, independent and impartial fact-finding mission on human rights violations related to the Beirut port explosion of August 4, 2020.”

There is a need for justice. The country owes it not only to the victims but to the hundreds of thousands of Lebanese who rolled up their sleeves and put a devastated city back on its feet. It owes it to Madame Ketty and Abou Fadi, who left us a year ago.

The numbers of the tragedy

235 deaths

6,500 injured

300,000 homeless immediately after the explosion

70,000 people have lost their jobs

9,200 buildings damaged

163 schools and educational centers damaged

106 health facilities damaged, including six hospitals and 20 clinics