Anger in Beirut after missed warnings over
'floating bomb'
Released paper trail reveals ignored warnings over
stash that has killed at least 135 people
Michael
Safi in Amman, Andrew Roth in Moscow and Martin Chulov in Beirut
Wed 5 Aug
2020 19.45 BSTLast modified on Thu 6 Aug 2020 03.12 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/05/floating-bomb-disclosed-documents-reveal-path
Anger and
dismay has been building in Beirut as officials admitted that a massive port
explosion that killed at least 135 people, injured thousands and left many more
homeless was foreseeable and had been the subject of repeated warnings.
With
Lebanon’s capital still smouldering, an emerging paper trail linked the blast
to a mammoth stash of ammonium nitrate that was once described as a “floating
bomb” and housed at the port since 2014. As recently as six months ago, officials
inspecting the consignment warned that if it was not moved it would “blow up
all of Beirut”.
The
revelation that government negligence may have played a role in the worst
explosion in Beirut’s history fuelled new anger towards Lebanon’s political
class among a population already seething at an ongoing financial crisis that
has sunk half the country into poverty. Demonstrators in downtown Beirut
attacked the convoy of former Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri and brawled
with his bodyguards in the most overt display of wider anger that is building
against Lebanese politicians in the wake of the disaster.
The
government said on Wednesday evening it was putting an unspecified number of
Beirut port officials under house arrest pending an investigation into how the
highly explosive materials came to be stored less than 100 metres from a
residential neighbourhoods. The national cabinet also declared a two-week state
of emergency, effectively giving the military full powers in the capital.
The death
toll climbed to more than 135 people according to the Lebanese Red Cross with
another 5,000 wounded. Up to 300,000 people had suffered damage to their homes,
leaving some uninhabitable, Beirut’s governor, Marwan Abboud, said. Dozens of
people are still missing, feared buried under rubble.
Residents
across the city were sweeping shattered glass and other debris from their homes
on Wednesday morning as blame for the tragedy started to be apportioned on
social media and Lebanese TV channels.
The
Lebanese prime minister on Tuesday night had blamed the explosion on
2,750-tonne store of ammonium nitrate, a chemical used in bombs and
fertilisers, that had been stored at the port. Media reports from 2014 claimed
a Russian-owned vessel carrying that load was impounded at Beirut’s port that
year, after making an emergency stop in the city and being denied permission to
leave by customs authorities because it was deemed unseaworthy.
The former
captain of the vessel, the Rhosus, alleged in an interview with Russian
journalists six years ago that the owner of the ship, reported as Igor
Grechushkin, had abandoned it along with the crew, who were being “held
hostage” by customs authorities. “The owner has abandoned the ship. The cargo
is ammonium nitrate. It is an explosive substance. And we’ve been abandoned.
We’ve been living for 10 months on a powder keg.”
The
Guardian has not been able to verify the claims Grechushkin was the ship’s
owner and has attempted to contact him for comment.
In another
letter published by a journalist in touch with the crew, the ship was described
as “a floating bomb and the crew is a hostage aboard this bomb.”
The mostly
Ukrainian crew were held onboard the ship for nearly a year before they were
released, their lawyers said in a 2015 note, and the ammonium nitrate was
confiscated and held at the port in a warehouse.
In an
interview with Radio Free Europe on Wednesday, the ship’s captain denied there
were problems with the ship and said it was detained for failing to pay port
fees. The International Transport Workers Federation, which sought back wages
and repatriation for the crew, confirmed that the ship was being held in part
because it owed the port $100,000 in unpaid bills. In an interview with Radio
Free Europe on Wednesday, the ship’s captain at the time, Boris Prokoshev, said
he had been in direct contact with Grechushkin, whom he called the ship’s
owner.
Badri
Daher, the director-general of Lebanese Customs, told broadcaster LBCI on
Wednesday morning that in the years that folllowed, his agency had sent six
documents to the judiciary warning that the material posed a danger. “We
requested that it be re-exported but that did not happen,” he said. “We leave
it to the experts and those concerned to determine why.”
The news agency Reuters quoted an anonymous source
close to a port employee saying a team had inspected the ammonium nitrate six
months ago and warned that if it was not moved it would “blow up all of
Beirut”. Another source said several committees and judges had been warned
about the chemicals was “nothing was done” to dispose of it.
Still
unclear was what set off the ammonium nitrate, which requires extreme heat to
ignite. Abboud said on Tuesday that the Beirut municipality had dispatched
firefighters to the site in response to reports of a blaze, and that they were
missing after the explosion – suggesting the fire had burned long enough for
the crew to arrive at the scene.
Several
pieces of footage from the moments preceding the blast also showed thick grey
smoke billowing from port, along with a series of small explosions that gave
off red fumes, and then a massive blast involving more than 1,300-times the
amount of ammonium nitrate used in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
Reuters
quoted an anonymous source on Wednesday claiming the fire had started at a
warehouse number nine, before spreading to warehouse 12 where the ammonium
nitrate was stored. The source of the initial fire is not publicly known.
Aerial and
drone photographs showed a deep crater of blasted land where warehouse 12
stood, next to a row of destroyed grain silos and the surrounding area almost
entirely razed.
The
Lebanese economy minister, Raoul Nehme, said damage to the silos had left the
country with less than a month’s grain reserves, but claimed there was no risk
of food shortage. “There is no bread or flour crisis,” he said. “We have enough
inventory and boats on their way to cover the needs of Lebanon on the long
term.”
Abboud said
damage from the blast extended over half of Beirut, with the cost of damage
likely above $3bn.
On
Wednesday evening, the UK Foreign Office announced a British aid package for
Lebanon, including up to £5m in emergency humanitarian funding, as well as
deploying search and rescue experts, tailored medical help, strategic air
transport assistance, and engineering and communications support.
Much of
East Beirut is no longer inhabitable, something that the few residents and
shopkeepers picking through their wrecked businesses tacitly acknowledge. “I
don’t know how we’re going to get through this,” said Issam Nassir, the manager
of a tyre shop that stood incongruously amid what used to be a travel agent, a
pizza parlour, and an upmarket bar – all destroyed. “Do you really think
Hiroshima could have been worse than this?”
The sound
of mountains of glass being swept from balconies and cascading onto roads was a
soundtrack to the day. Tired emergency workers trudged through the streets,
some holding sledgehammers, others carrying water. A carpark in the Gemmayze
district had been turned into a triage centre. Orange plastic stretchers, slick
with blood were lined up from one side to the other.
After
becoming a byword for destruction and chaos in the 1980s, Beirut rebounded from
its 15-year civil war to regain a reputation as a hard-partying playground for
the wealthy and theatre for the Middle East’s political intrigues.
Bullet
holes still marked many buildings, electricity remained intermittent and the
divisions of the civil war went unreconciled, but Lebanon defied its doomsayers
for three decades, attracting investment from across the region and millions of
dollars in remittances from its diaspora that papered over the cracks in its
institutions and infrastructure.
That run
appears to have ended in 2020, with its national accounts revealed to be
stuffed with loans it cannot repay, and the bureaucratic inertia and negligence
that dogs the lives of many Lebanese accused of contributing to one of the
worst disasters in the country’s modern history.
“What
happened yesterday is the result of the incompetence of the so-called
responsible people,” wrote Stéphane Bazan, a Lebanese consultant, in a widely
shared Facebook post on Wednesday.
“How many
disasters are still waiting for? We run out of electricity, water is poisoned,
food is suspicious, weapons are everywhere. They stole our money, our
children’s future.”
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