Beirut nurse: I feared I’d fall and lose a baby
Hero captured in iconic snap tells of race against time to save 3 premature tots after port blast
CLUTCHING three tiny premature babies she is carrying from a ruined hospital after the Beirut blast, nurse Pamela Zeinoun calmly stops to answer the emergency room phone in a photo that touched the world.
She fought back tears yesterday as she told of climbing over debris in the dark and down flights of blood-soaked stairs with them amid Tuesday’s chaos.
Pamela was working on the maternity ward at Saint
George Hospital when the Lebanese capital’s port was hit by a massive explosion.
She was knocked out and woke to find other colleagues injured, ceilings collapsed and wards strewn with rubble.
Her patients, a twin boy and girl and another baby, were in incubators under collapsed shelves. Pamela said: “I had to put them against me and squeeze them to fit all three between my arms.”
With the lifts not working and the lights out, Pamela picked her way down four flights of stairs. She said: “I was afraid one of them would slip from me.
“I was always patting my chest to check all three heads were still with me. I couldn’t feel my feet on the slippery stairs. I was scared of slipping, or any of the babies slipping, or me falling on them. I did not want to lose any. All emergency exits were blocked so we had to dig our way out.”
Outside, Pamela found doctors stitching patients’ wounds on the floor.
Despite the chaos, she stopped to answer the emergency room phone – and journalist Bilal Jawich captured the moment. He said: “She looked like she possessed a hidden force.”
Survivors said the blast was so powerful it was like a nuclear bomb – and the hospital was 1km away. Four nurses, 12 patients and a visitor died.
Thanks to Pamela walking the tots to another hospital, all three survived. She said: “Bystanders gave their shirts, I had to keep them warm.
“I felt, they’re under my protection, if they’re going to make it, they’re going to make it with me.”
Meanwhile, thousands joined protests in the city yesterday, blaming Lebanon’s “corrupt” leaders for the blast that killed at least 158, wounded 5,000 and left more than 300,000 homeless. There was anger after it emerged it was caused by a huge ammonium nitrate stash kept at the port for six years, despite warnings.
Prosecutors have arrested 16 port staff and the UN warns of a humanitarian crisis as food supplies are hit.