The timing couldn’t have been worse. Just a few days ahead of the second anniversary of the Beirut port explosion, which killed 216 people, injured 6,000 and shattered the homes of some 300,000 people in the surrounding neighborhoods, part of the northern grain silos gave in and collapsed with a loud crash.
Only this time, nobody was killed.
But the sound resembled an explosion, and together with the smoke and the fire, it rekindled the trauma caused when 2,750 metric tons (3,031 US tons) of unsecured ammonium nitrate detonated at the port on August 4, 2020.
“I don’t feel that two years have passed at all,” William Noun in Beirut told DW after the latest collapse. He lost his brother Joe Noun in the 2020 explosion. “I still feel the same heartbreak as the first day,” he added.
The collapse of the 50-meter (164 feet) high silos came after a weeks-long fire triggered by grains that had fermented and ignited in the summer heat. In an interview with DW in Beirut, Lebanon’s Minister of Public Works and Transport Ali Hamieh, who is in charge of the port, rejected accusations that the government had failed to take action when the fire broke out three weeks ago.
“Experts told us that is impossible to take the wheat out due to the fragile structure of the silo,” Hamieh said, adding that the government will still try to preserve the more secure parts of the remaining structure.
Survivors wanted to hold on to silos as a memorial
The silos, which had shielded parts of Beirut during the 2020 blast, have stirred controversy. In April, the Lebanese government approved the demolition of the silos after a survey found they could collapse in the coming months.
But many survivors and families of the victims had argued that the silos could contain evidence for the judicial probe into the 2020 blast. Many also wanted the silos to remain as a memorial.
Two years after the blast, the Beirut port is still riddled with debris
The 2020 blast is widely seen by many…