Five Canadian Organizations Helping Beirut Recover
Why It Matters
Beirutโs warehouse explosion earlier this month is only Beirutโs latest tragedy. Ongoing fallout from Lebanonโs civil war, an economic crisis and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic is taking its toll. In the midst of these overlapping crises, who is stepping in and helping the survivors?
Earlier this month, another calamity struck Beirut.
The Lebanese capital is facing an economic meltdown, lingering political violence, and the global threat of COVID-19. Some of Lebanonโs worst wildfires in decades occurred last October. And on August 4, a fire at the port cityโs dockyard ignited a warehouse filled with nearly three thousand tonnes of confiscated ammonium nitrate, a highly explosive chemical. Local officials say it had been left to sit for six years without proper safety procedures.
To the uneducated eye, the resulting explosion looked more akin to a ballistic missile striking its target. โIt was as if the sky folded onto itself in a deafening crackling that shook the ground like an earthquake,โ an eyewitness wrote for Al Jazeera. The blast ripped the balconies from apartments, topped buildings onto pedestrians, and scattered debris across much
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