Chronicle: "I shout to the children that we must get out of the windows"

My brain can only think one thing now. I shout to the children that we must get out of the windows. The hall is safest. When we rush, the pressure wave comes and the shard of ice flies around us. Me and our youngest son end up next to the drinking water dispenser in the kitchen that overturns. We go out into the hall. We sit down and hug each other. My husband and I decide to leave the apartment now. The stairs, we take the stairs, we tell the children.  

Down the street, screams, cries and ringing fire alarms are heard. Someone wonders if the children want water. Our friends have not had time to leave the house yet and the youngest boy who is nine years old says he needs a hug.

My neighbors have lived through fifteen years of war but no one I ask has experienced a similar detonation. Later I will find out that this is one of the most powerful explosions in world history. But right now I want to know if our friends in this accident-hit city are alive. The phone lines are dead but the internet works. Short messages are pouring in. Are you ok? We are ok ”. And from someone who lives closer to the port “I managed, but barely. Everything here is ruined ”.

I walk through a city that looks like it was hit by an earthquake. A port is gone. Beirut's lifeline. Lebanon imports most of the food eaten. Hundreds of warehouses and buildings have been leveled. It took a few seconds to make a quarter of a million people homeless.

Families from other parts of the city are moving into our house. Volunteers come from all over the country to sweep broken glass and rebuild destroyed hospitals. The strength of the Lebanese is great and witnessed, but we are crying. Two parents in our children's school have lost their lives. Two of many.

Out of the first shock and grief, anger soon rises. How could nearly three thousand tons of highly explosive material be stored in the heart of the city for years, despite repeated warnings about how dangerous it is? How much can a population, whose politicians are among the world's most corrupt, cope? The anger over the mismanagement is hardly new. This country was already on the border.

A neighbor calls and says she wants to borrow garbage brushes. The sound of shards of glass being shoveled into piles is now heard throughout an entire city.