Dangerous chemicals still at port, say specialists
There are still dangerous materials stored at Beirut port, a French chemicals expert said yesterday, as an investigation by The National revealed that fireworks were known to have been stored there next to tonnes of ammonium nitrate.
French and Italian chemical specialists working in the ruins of the port identified more than 20 containers of dangerous chemicals, said a French expert who identified himself as Lt Anthony.
“We noted the presence of containers with the chemical danger symbol. And then we noted that one of the containers was leaking,” he told Associated Press on Monday.
“We need to clean everything and put all in security,” he said. Specialists were working with firefighters to locate all the containers and analyse their contents.
“There are also other flammable liquids in other containers, there are also batteries, or other kinds of products that could increase the risk of potential explosion,” Lt Anthony said, describing containers tossed around the port by the force of the blast.
The revelation came after former port employees told The
National that they knew fireworks were stored in the same hangar as the 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that caused the explosion last week.
The workers said the warehousewas one of the port’ s most closely guarded areas and that port staff had regularly advised officials that the contents of the warehouse should be moved.
Documents seen by Reuters news agency yesterday showed that the government was told about the contents of the warehouse as recently as last month.
Yusuf Shehadi, who worked at the port from 2009 until March, said that officials failed to act because of rivalries between bureaucracies and negligence in government.
An account of the handling of dangerous material at the port from Mahmoud Ali, who worked there for more than 20 years, supported Mr Shehadi’s claims.
Mr Ali recalled how high-level officials in Lebanese customs and the port authorities who ordered firecrackers to be stored in Warehouse 12 in 2009 were four years later part of the team told to unload ammonium nitrate from the container ship Rhosus to be stored at the same site. Judicial sources told
The National that several senior port officials were arrested as part of the investigation into the explosion.
Mr Ali said that Warehouse 12 was not in regular use but was used to store banned or dangerous materials, or materials that had been confiscated by the government.
Separately, in an indication that the issue behind last week’s blast might be more widespread, local media reported that a Lebanese judge had ordered authorities to remove 3,970 tonnes of unspecified “highly dangerous material” stored in warehouses at Zouk Mikael power station to the north of Beirut.
The order by Judge Ghassan Owaidat, the attorney general of the Court of Cassation, came after an investigation reportedly ordered by the town’s mayor after the Beirut blast.
The mayor claimed that his area was also used to store ammonium nitrate.