Articles
Explosions in Beirut
Tuesday August 4th,2020 Beirut was rocked with tragedy.
From October Lebanon has had to deal with a revolution, a failing economy and Corona lockdowns they were already in dire straights. Many families who had not struggled before were now unable to feed their families and were coming to our center asking for help.
Then the late afternoon on Tuesday Beirut got a shock.
I was driving on my way to the gym and had my music up loud. I heard a large boom but it didn’t seem to be big (the first explosion) and then saw the clouds ripple across the sky and I had just enough time to pull over to try to see what was going on and then the wave of shaking and then the sound of the second explosion of the warehouse hit us. I sat for a minute as everyone else did in shock and waited… we were waiting to see if there would be more before we moved. Then there were people flooding the street, there was glass everywhere and everyone was on their phones checking on loved ones. One woman came running out of her building wailing trailed by what I assumed was her adult sons or other male relatives who were trying to calm her as the sounds of course brought memories of the two wars already she had survived here in Beirut. I went home. I began calling family to make sure I got to them before the news. It was then we began to learn the magnitude of what had just happened.
The warehouse at the Beirut port full of ammonium nitrate had exploded. Which was why the blast was so deep and widespread and wide felt. In Cyprus there were reports of both hearing and feeling the blast.
Our Beirut center was damaged as our front window had been knocked out and when we gathered to clean there was a consensus that we needed to do something else. Volunteers were called and 400 sandwiches were made to be passed out in neighborhoods that were now rubble to people who’s last thought was food, but their minds were on finding missing family members and friends and to see what was left of their homes.
Tomorrow we will be out of course doing what we can to help. The numbers currently stand at 148 dead and over 5000 injured. This is just the numbers the hospitals are reporting. The real numbers of wounded we may never know as many did not even go to hospitals or went to small clinics to get stitches from the broken glass.
Please pray with this nation was already in tumult but now it is reeling. It’s reeling with pain, anger, shock, and confusion, but we stand ready to bring hope and I’m reminded as I write of the prayer of St Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy
O Divine Master, grant that I may
Not so much seek to be consoled as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to Eternal Life
Amen
-Kelsie (Beirut center)
