When a disaster, explosion, or any security event occurs that results in victims, several groups of society whose mission is to save the lives of people, heal their wounds, help them to stay alive, keep abreast of the event, and convey its details and circumstances to the whole world.
Those in the "catastrophe" of Beirut were not the refuge of the afflicted, but rather they were victims. They are being searched for under the rubble and needing someone to treat them, and they become the event that is covered by the media.
The Beirut Port explosion, which resulted in more than 160 dead and thousands of wounded and massive destruction in the Lebanese capital, left major calamities in these groups, the largest and most painful of which was the Beirut Fire Brigade, which provided the first victims on the altar of this disaster.
When the fire broke out, which was the spark of the big explosion, a team of 10 volunteers rushed to extinguish it, but it was their last mission, as two of them found their bodies and the rest remained missing under the rubble.
The fire brigade building adjacent to the port at its outer gate raises two pictures of his "martyrs", while the regiment waits for news about the other eight to cool the hearts of their families and colleagues.
The tragic thing is that 3 of the missing are from one family, and Antonella, even the sister of the victims, tells what happened on the fateful day. “When the explosion occurred in the port, we tried to contact Najib and Charbel to check on them, so their phone was out of coverage. After many attempts, we had panic, telling us that they entered To extinguish the fire and did not return. "
On that day, the family went to all Beirut hospitals, which were living in a state of panic and chaos, and searched among the wounded and the corpses and in the cold of the dead, without finding any traces of them, then they learned that they were among the missing inside the port.
And she adds, "Naguib and Charbel were like brothers and we were brought up together in one house, as is my sister Charbel Karam's husband, who was a father of two daughters and was a great brother to them, and there are no words to describe their brotherhood, their drive and their passion in their work."
Antonella regrets that none of the Lebanese authorities is communicating with them, even if to console them. She describes her staff as "unscrupulous and responsible." She added, "All their comrades search with primitive tools to find even remnants of the fire brigade corpses. These comrades are brothers to some of them and to us, after they ransacked Beirut and its people with their lives and their dash, and fell victim to the criminality of the authority against its people."
And from the fire brigade to the "Roum" hospital in the Ashrafieh area near the port of Beirut, the tragic scene is one, after the hospital building became out of service as well.
The huge explosion that rocked the Al-Roum Hospital and completely destroyed its contents, left 4 nurses among the dead, and dozens of wounded among the medical staff.
Days after the explosion, and in the outside courtyard of the hospital, the faces of the medical workers and staff were grieving, as they checked each other, as if they had not yet woken up from their shock.
Dr. Patrick Bertian (30 years), a specialist in orthopedic surgery, who suffered many wounds to his face and hand, stands next to his colleague, gynecologist Daisy Masoud (27 years) with her mother, after they lived moments of the explosion in one of the hospital rooms.
Daisy - who was hit in the head - told Al Jazeera Net, "My mother was in the hospital and she had an operation, so she came to my rescue with Patrick, who came to the room to check on her. We fell from the blast to the ground, and we thought at first glance that we died, so my mother took the serum from her hand and ran together." We were bleeding, and most of our colleagues and patients were screaming and drowning in blood. "
And Bertian said, "We did not understand that we were part of the victims rather than rushing to help them in the hospital, and we did not believe that we escaped death after the difficult moments that we lived in a place that had to be the safest."
At Martyrs' Square in downtown Beirut, the horror of the port explosion is evident in the massive destruction of the building of the Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar, which is located parallel to it.
This large glass building, which "Al-Nahar" moved to in 2004, its glass facade was completely fragmented, and its offices turned into a pile of destruction as a result of its contents being destroyed, and it is now out of service.
“If I had stayed inside my office on the sixth floor, I would not have survived,” Ibrahim Haydar, a journalist at Al-Nahar newspaper, tells Al-Jazeera Net, and narrates what “An-Nahar” lived in those moments between life and death.
Haidar, who sustained injuries to his head, forehead and body, describes the sound of last Tuesday's explosion as "historic," which was unheard of throughout his journalistic career and during the Lebanese civil war. He said, "When the explosion occurred at 6 pm, I was sitting in my office facing the building of the port’s slums, and watching the fire that escalated from there, then the first explosion rang out, from which a white and red cloud rose."
At that moment, Haidar overcame his journalistic sense, so he went directly to the editorial office to make contacts and assign photographers and journalists to follow the circumstances of the explosion, until the second explosion sounded like an earthquake, and hit the "An-Nahar" building, in which about 15 people were injured (11 journalists, two exits, and others) Of technologists).
"If I had returned to my office within 30 seconds between the first and second explosion, I would have been hurt a lot, after part of it fell onto the street," he concluded.