28 2GM Thursday August 6 2020 | the times
Wo r l d
support flooded in from around the
world but whether that money reaches
small businesses is another matter.
“I can’t remember anything,” Niamh
Fleming-Farrell, the Irish co-owner of a
café-bookshop, said. Her friend said
they had been inside the café, closed
because of coronavirus, when the door
flew in and threw Ms Fleming-Farrell
against a wall. She was passed fit by a
hospital scan and is wondering what
the future holds, after six months of
political crisis, lockdowns and now this.
Father Danny Jallek was mourningthe loss of a parishioner in her late
sixties, killed in her flat next to the
church of St Anthony of Padua.
The church roof was destroyed. In-
side, the cross over the altar stood
above upturned pews. “The political
and economic crisis means no one
knows what will happen,” Fr Danny
said. “What is next for us?”
All along the main road that runs
past the port, lined with office blocks,
vans were parked and workers carried
away files and equipment. Coronavirus,
which has kept people at home, thesummer holidays and the time of the
blast — after offices closed — almost
certainly prevented even more deaths.
The Wardieh petrol station opposite
the port took the full force. A manager
called Bassil said that of its seven work-
ers one was dead, five were in hospital
and one was missing: “We have called
every hospital and we can’t find him.”
Then there was the port itself. Noth-
ing remained, except the ruins of the
warehouses and the stench that rose
above it, along with puffs of smoke. The
port is the symbol of the other Lebanon,ANWAR AMRO/AFP/GETTY; JAMAL SAIDI/REUTERS; HUSSEIN MALLA/APThe blast sucked the air from the
to do as they want, to pray, to argue or
to drink. It is a city that is visibly pros-
perous in parts, despite having no oil
money, and one where historic build-
ings are preserved and memories of all
sides in past wars honoured.
This Beirut has been badly hit. The
blast climbed the hills from the port,
through the streets that line both
Christian east and Muslim west, where
the youth of both “sides” mingle freely.
From there the wave continued on
and on, through slums, luxury apart-
ments, taking down the ceilings of
shopping malls five miles away.
“It was just burning at the beginning,
but then it exploded,” Ahmed Ali, a
Muslim shopkeeper next to a Christian-
run bar, said as he swept up the glass. He
had been inside his grocery on a side
street leading up from the port and was
thrown about but remained safe inside.
He knew he was lucky. At least 135 are
dead, many thousands injured and
300,000 homeless. “The buildings are
empty. Nothing remains. Our building
is gone, all Beirut is in crisis,” Mr Ali
said. The government has declared a
two-week state of emergency, effec-
tively giving the military full power.
Mr Ali’s street leads to Gemmayze, a
stone’s throw from the port and an area
lined with hipster bars and restaurants.
The most fashionable new cocktail
joint is run by a young woman from Bei-
jing. No more: every front was stoved in,
each adding to a repair bill estimated by
the authorities at $3 billion. Offers ofLebanon will count
the cost of disaster
for years, writes
Richard Spencer
from Beirut
Q&A
What is ammonium nitrate?
It is an industrial chemical mostly used
for fertiliser as a source of nitrogen for
plants. It is also a key component in
industrial explosives, such as those
used in mining, although terrorist
groups and individuals have used it in
homemade bombs. Ammonium nitrate
is not explosive by itself and requires
another substance, such as oil, to
become highly explosive. It is an
oxidiser — drawing oxygen to a fire,
making it more intense.Why was it in Beirut’s port?
The 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitratesaid to have caused the explosion were
stored in a warehouse. They had been
seized in September 2013 from a
Moldovan flagged ship that was forced
to stop at the port en route from
Georgia to Mozambique. Port
authorities prevented the ship from
continuing its journey with the cargo
because of debts including port fees
owed by the owner. They unloaded the
materials after the owners abandoned
the vessel and crew. The cargo and the
ship were supposed to have been sold
at auction or disposed of. It is unclear
why it had remained in storage since
then.Who owned the ship and its cargo?
The 87-metre ship Rhosus was said to
be owned by Igor Grechushkin, a
businessman from the Russian city ofAmmonium nitrate explosions
Faversham, UK. April 2, 1916
200 tons of TNT and unknown quantity
of ammonium nitrate explode. 115 men
and boys were killed
Oppau, Germany. September 21, 1921
Mixture of ammonium nitrate and
ammonium sulfate explodes killing 521
Texas City, US. 1947
2,300 tons explodes killing 500
Oklahoma City, US. 1995
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols
detonate truck bomb killing 168
Docklands, London. 1996
IRA truck bomb kills two and injures
more than 100
Tianjin, China. 2015
Warehouse accident kills more than 170razed swathes of the
city, killed at least 135
people and injured
thousands moreA photo of the port
from 1996 shows
how the area looked
before Tuesday’s
explosion, which was
caused by huge
stocks of ammonium
nitrate. The blastAll night the injured poured into
Beirut’s remaining hospitals, the ones
not wiped out by the blast wave that
sucked the air from the sky and the life
from one of the world’s great cities.
“It was a zoo,” said an accident and
emergency doctor at the American
University Hospital, which has the best
reputation in the Middle East. Yester-
day it was a hospital for ordinary Leba-
nese, but many, the doctor said, had
died by the time they arrived. “The
mortuary is full,” he said.
When he compared it to a zoo he was
talking about the bedlam as the wound-
ed hobbled in or arrived screaming in
taxis but he could have been talking
about the state of the country.
Tuesday’s destruction exposed the
gulf between the cosmopolitan, pros-
perous city that Beirut was, and what it
is fast becoming as it is torn apart by
failed economics and fractured politics.
Since the civil war Beirut has been
one of the few cities in the Middle East
that could pass for “normal”, where the
wealthy rub along with the middle and
working classes, where people are free