THOUSANDS FLEE U.S. WILDFIRES.
Month after blast that shattered city
BEIRUT • Civilians rushed to evacuate the area surrounding the Beirut port Thursday after a massive fire broke out at a warehouse storing oil and tires, stoking anxieties in a city already traumatized by a deadly explosion at the same port last month.
Plumes of smoke filled the air as a smell of sulphur and burned rubber spread across the capital.
The Lebanese army tweeted that operations were underway to extinguish the fire and that military helicopters would assist in the mission.
Michel al-murr, a firefighter who oversees rescue missions in the capital, said his team did not know how the fire began. In the background, he could be heard shouting orders to his team on the ground.
A customs officer at the port who spoke on the condition of anonymity described the situation on the ground as “crazy” and said some containers storing humanitarian aid for the city also appeared to be catching fire.
George Abou Moussa, head of Lebanon’s civil defence, said he asked for assistance from water tank owners to help fight the fire.
Last month, firefighters who rushed to the scene of a blaze at the port were killed when a warehouse storing 2,750 tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate detonated, leaving a crater 14 metres deep. Nearly 200 people were killed, and thousands of others were injured. The powerful blast devastated entire neighbourhoods in the capital, displacing hundreds of thousands of people.
Footage circulating on social media showed panicked port workers sprinting from the scene of the fire Thursday.
A resident who gave his name only as Moustafa said he was working at a café that had recently reopened after repairing the damage from last month’s blast.
Then, as smoke filled the sky Thursday afternoon, it was as if “the world became yellow,” he said. He ran from the café in Gemmayzeh, a neighbourhood badly hit by the earlier blast, and urged others to do the same, snaking through traffic as people fled the area.
“There’s no way you can imagine the traffic. It wasn’t moving,” Moustafa said. “And I made sure that I’m in the middle of the road, far from cars, far from glass, because honestly I was just waiting for something to explode.”
When he reached home, he threw open his windows and doors to try to limit the possibility that they would shatter in case of another explosion, as had occurred in so many buildings across the city one month ago.
“Just waiting,” he said.