Three newborns trapped in incubators carried 5km to safety
A Lebanese nurse is being hailed as a heroine after rescuing three newborns from the debris of her badly damaged hospital and carrying them five kilometres to safety.
Pamela Zeinoun was on the fourth floor of Saint George Hospital University Medical Centre in Beirut on Tuesday when the explosion at the city’s port flung her into the neonatal intensive care unit next door.
“I was not able to go back in because all the doors were closed,” she said. “I went to another door on the floor and saw many colleagues who were bleeding from injuries on their hands, heads and backs. We were very scared and could not understand what had really happened until then.”
“I called doctors for help. One of them grabbed a baby and I was able to grab a twin brother and sister and another baby,” she said.
The building is fewer than 500 metres from the port and bore the full impact of the explosion, which damaged half of the city, killed more than 150 people and injured at least 5,000.
Ms Zeinoun told The National that the blast caused ceilings to collapse and left rooms strewn with rubble.
A man who was visiting his newborn daughter helped to lift steel shelves that fell on the incubators so she could pull the three babies out.
But with the lifts out of order, Ms Zeinoun and the doctors then had to carry the children down four flights of stairs.
“I couldn’t feel my feet while climbing down the slippery stairs,” she said. “I was scared of slipping, or any of the babies slipping, or me falling on them. I did not want to lose any of them and wanted to get them to safety.
“All emergency exits were blocked and so we had to dig our way out. We reached the ground … the scene was horrible. Doctors and nurses were on the floor and patients were running in fright. We couldn’t do anything.”
Four of the hospital’s nurses, 12 patients and one visitor were killed in the massive explosion.
More than 100 employees, including doctors, nurses and administrative staff, suffered injuries ranging from mild to critical, it said.
Ms Zeinoun said she could not explain how she managed to remain calm and courageous amid the chaos.
She said only that her focus on rescuing the babies overrode any concern for her own well-being.
The hospital’s staff are trained to rush to the emergency room in such situations, but when they got there it was very badly damaged, she said.
Doctors were stitching patients’ wounds on the floor and using compression bandages to stem bleeding. There were no medical materials to work with, Ms Zeinoun said.
Amid the confusion, and still clutching the three newborns, she stopped to answer the emergency room phone, a moment that was captured by photojournalist Bilal Jawich.
Ms Zeinoun carried the newborns into the street, helped by a doctor, Nadim Hajal, who took one of the infants.
The first hospital they reached was also badly damaged and the children could not be admitted.
They walked the streets of Achrafieh, in the city’s east, still holding the babies in their arms.
“I asked bystanders, who volunteered to help, to give us their shirts to keep the babies safe,” Ms Zeinoun said.
“The three newborns are under two kilograms each and I had to cover them up and keep them warm, otherwise they wouldn’t live.
“We walked about five kilometres until we found a car that could help us take the babies to a hospital a bit outside Beirut,” she said.
Ms Zeinoun said she was motivated by the fear of losing any of the babies.
“I was too scared. The reason behind all what I did was to get the trio to safety. I would not have been able to stand the situation had I lost any of them. During all this, my main concern was to keep them breathing and unharmed.”