Countdown to disaster: How a staggering amount of explosive material left to fester for years inside the Port of Beirut led to the worst single-day catastrophe in Lebanon’s history.
FILE - In this August 5, 2020 file photo, smoke rises from the scene of an explosion that hit the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon. It was 20 minutes before 6:08 p.m. when the Beirut fire brigade received the call from an employee at the nearby port reporting a big fire. Ten firefighters, including a female paramedic, piled into a fire engine and an ambulance and raced toward the scene, and their ultimate death.
Across the city, residents who noticed the grey smoke billowing over the facility were drawn to streets, balconies and windows, watching curiously as the fire grew larger. Phones were pulled out of pockets and pointed toward the flames. The Port of Beirut is considered one of the most corrupt institutions in a country where nearly every public institution is riddled with corruption. Port officials are notorious for taking bribes. A bribe from an importer, for example, will ensure an incoming shipment is mislabeled to get lower customs duties — or escapes duties and taxes completely. Confiscated goods are sometimes sold off on the sly for a profit.
Skaff’s son, Michel, said he was killed by a blow to the head. He said his father dealt with other sensitive matters, including drug trafficking. “Someone maybe was trying to hide what is happening at the port,” he said by telephone from his home in New York City. In October 2014, the ammonium nitrate was moved into the port’s Warehouse 12, which holds impounded materials.
The then-head of the customs department, Shafeeq Merhi, wrote back in February 2016, saying an expert found the nitrogen level was 34.7%, a very high and dangerous level, well above the acceptable concentration of around 11%. Merhi and his successor as customs chief, Badri Daher, sent multiple letters in the following years to the Courts of Urgent Matters, warning of the danger and seeking permission to sell the material or a ruling on another way to get rid of it.
The report to President Michel Aoun and then-Prime Minister Hassan Diab warned that thieves could steal the material to make explosives. Or, it said, the mass of material could cause an explosion “that would practically destroy the port.” Kobaissi shared the report with the AP. “The same memo was sent roughly every year basically since that ship arrived, and it became clear the stuff wasn’t moving. So, it was like a tradition and it wasn’t marked as priority,” the official told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to talk to the media.
Both the customs chief Daher and the head of the port, Hassan Koraytem, are among those detained in the wake of the explosion.On the afternoon of Aug. 4, security officials say, three metalworkers who had been working for several days to weld the broken Door Number 9 of Warehouse 12 finished work and left the facility.
No one told the emergency responders that dangerous material was stored in the warehouse. No port officials were even there to help them open the gate, Khankarli said. In an instant, a blast with the force of hundreds of tons of TNT sucked in the air — one video showed a luxury store window exploding outward from the suction, spraying a bride and groom taking their wedding video on the sidewalk outside — and then unleashed its power across the city.
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