Beirut searches for survivors after massive explosion
BEIRUT – Blood stained the asphalt Wednesday as the streets of Beirut teemed with rescuers and bystanders a day after a massive explosion killed at least 135 and wounded about 5,000 people in Lebanon’s capital.
The government declared a two-week state of emergency, effectively giving the military full powers during this time, and announced it was launching an investigation into ammonium nitrate stored at the port where the blast originated.
Smoke was still rising from the port, where the blast half-destroyed a towering building of silos estimated to house 85% of the nation’s grain. Much of downtown was littered with damaged cars, mounds of debris and shattered glass, which shopkeepers tried to clean up.
Angelique Sabounjian, 34, was in a coffeehouse in the port area when she heard an initial explosion. She left just as the massive second explosion happened.
“I felt something hit my head; next thing I know, I felt what I could describe as a warm fountain pouring from my head ... we ran to the Red Cross center nearby. I saw bodies on the floor,” she said, adding that because she couldn’t get help there, she tried to go to nearby hospitals, but they were demolished. “I don’t know how I got the energy and power to walk further with the blood flowing into my mouth and nostrils.”
Eventually, she was helped. Doctors told her she swallowed more than a liter of blood.
And yet, she was one of the lucky ones. She survived. Scores of people remained missing Wednesday, with relatives pleading on social media for help. An Instagram page called “Locating Victims Beirut” shows photos of missing people, and the names of missing or wounded people were read on the radio throughout Tuesday night. The death toll is likely to climb.
An official cause for the most powerful explosion to hit the beleaguered city has not been given, but the government ordered port officials put under house arrest Wednesday, pending an investigation into how the ammonium nitrate came to be stored at the port for years.
Lebanon’s Interior Minister Mohammed Fahmi told a local TV station that it appeared the blast was caused by the detonation of more than 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate that had been stored in a warehouse since it was confiscated from a cargo ship impounded in 2013.
Explosives experts and video footage suggested the ammonium nitrate may have been ignited by a fire at what appeared to be a nearby warehouse containing fireworks.