Thank you everyone for your concern. The outpouring of support both for me personally and for the country has touched me deeply.
Everyone on my end is physically fine, but that’s as far as it goes, I’m afraid. We can’t go outside now as there is some sort of toxin in the air left after the explosion; we’ve been advised to stay indoors and wear masks when outside. The city is in ruins; entire neighbourhoods were demolished, thousands have been left homeless, more than a 100 dead and 4,000 injured as of now. Windows and doors were shattered all over the coast and the blast was heard all over the country and as far as Cyprus and northern Israel.
Two hospitals were destroyed; yesterday was spent evacuating patients to hospitals that had already reached full capacity, and which had already been under strain due to the pandemic. The injured were treated on sidewalks and in parking lots. In many places people are still stuck in their homes; news is saying that some people are being dug out from under rubble (dead and alive).
People all over the country have opened their homes to those who had been left homeless and hotels are also housing people. This couldn’t have come at a worse time, with hyperinflation, an economic collapse that has devalued the Lebanese pound by 80% and left salaries and savings worthless and many people destitute, the pandemic, and political crisis between pro-West and pro-Iran factions.
Another crisis is in the making now, as coronavirus infections will surely rise in the wake of yesterday’s panic and people fleeing their homes. We have two hospitals out of order and thousands wounded.
I don’t want to get too much into the causes of the blast as that’s highly political and I don’t want to discuss that, but it appears to be negligence on the part of the same corrupt political class that has caused the economic collapse and financial meltdown and which has been ruling our country for the past thirty years. Everyone called for them to resign last night (as we have been doing for the past year as part of the ongoing protest movement, and for many years before that) but up till now there have been no resignations.
I have still not received calls back from some friends. Would appreciate prayers for everyone involved, especially the dead, the homeles, and the injured.
