The Explosion That Killed A City

In the late afternoon of August 4th 2020, Beirut was alive and bustling with activity. Nurses were delivering newborns, people returned home from work, and a bride was preparing for her wedding photos. Just another ordinary Tuesday. Until it wasn't. In just a couple of seconds, countless lives would be lost and many more ruined, neighbourhoods would be erased and the city scarred forever. What happened here wasn't an outcome of war or terrorism and it wasn't a natural disaster. It would be one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in modern history, but as it turns out it was entirely preventable. This was basically a result of man at its worst. Corruption, dysfunction, infighting and shirking of responsibility as well as accountability. But to really understand how Beirut's port turned into a ticking time bomb, we will need to rewind the decades and tell you a story that started at the end of Lebanon's civil war and then continued all the way up to the beginning of the global Covid-19 pandemic. And that fateful afternoon in August. Hey! Before we start, I just want to tell you that this will be the very first episode of a brand new channel that is already up and running. So if you want to be among the very first few subscribers there and also help that channel grow, you can jump over right now using this link and watch the video over there instead. And if not, just sit back and relax and we'll get started. This is the port of Beirut, 30 minutes before the explosion. It's one of the city's main arteries and actually of the entire country. At the time, it handled the majority of the country's seaborne imports and those pristine grain silos once stood on the eastern side of the port and held the capability to store most of the country's strategic grain reserves. Now keep that image in mind. You could think of this port as Lebanon's mouth, feeding a country of more than 5 million people, so describing it as vital just doesn't really make it justice. Given its size, it contained a vast mix of docks and different storage facilities, but it's this building that we're interested in. Warehouse 12. This was a general port warehouse, which at the time housed large quantities of fireworks and other combustible materials, and it was far from properly equipped for storage of the hazardous and flammable substances that were kept inside. They were minimal to no security, the electricity was jerry-rigged and there wasn't even a smoke detector or sprinkler system installed, which is kind of incredible if you think of it. Now, all of that had raised concerns among the people who worked there and for reasons we will soon get to, nothing had been done. But what ultimately pushed this warehouse from being just a potential hazard to a city-destroying nightmare were the thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate that were sitting inside, spilling from torn bags. This had quite literally turned Warehouse 12 into a giant bomb, with its fuse just waiting to be lit. The first fire was reported at time 1740, and to this day the exact cause of it is debated. An unnamed security official later told various media outlets that sparks from a nearby welding operation were the most likely culprit. And another unnamed official source told the news-provided Reuters that the fire had actually started in Warehouse 9 and then spread to Warehouse 12. The FBI, who would eventually become involved in the investigation, also couldn't come to a fair conclusion about the fire's origin. But what we do know is that by time 1750 that fire had spread. By around 1754 videos began circulating online showing smoke rising from the northeast corner of Warehouse 12. By that time emergency responders had been called and a team of nine firefighters and one paramedic soon arrived and started working. With no idea of the full scale of the danger they were now facing. While there is no single global law specifically governing ammonium nitrate storage, there are internationally recognized safety standards and guidances. These recommend that large quantities of ammonium nitrate must be stored with robust risk mitigation measures, as well as emergency plans which can and should include evacuation procedures. But there were no such plans in place here. At around 1900 the blaze had spread to the roof of Warehouse 12, now tarnishing the sky with an ominous dark plume of black smoke. And that smoke also had an eerie ochre color to it, indicating the presence of a certain chemical fueling the fire. Now as a previous airport firefighter I can tell you that you can learn a lot from just watching the smoke. Black smoke means the presence of a lot of unburned material and this is what you typically see from a fuel fire or from a house in its initial stages of a fire. Whiter smoke normally means that water vapor is present, like when the firefighters have arrived, but any other strange colors is often a sign of chemicals and should be treated with real caution. At this point there was very little people on the street and in the buildings around could do. They could only watch and some also took out their phones to record it. The fire could be seen from quite a far distance and those standing behind their windows in offices and apartments likely assumed that they were safe there. But little did they know just how wrong they were. Those windows would soon be transformed into thousands of shards flying straight towards them like missiles. And it was also around this time that some people started realizing that this probably wasn't an ordinary fire. Now the reason for that, beyond the color of the smoke, was that at time 1805 the smoke had also begun to crackle. Small pinpricks of light now danced across the darkest part of the plume most likely being the product of those fireworks that had been stored inside of warehouse 12. But what no one understood was that beyond those fireworks another devastating process involving heat, pressure and chemical decomposition had now come to a critical tipping point. And then this was one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in human history and it completely ripped Beirut apart. Like I mentioned, this was the final detonation of a charge whose fuse had been lit well over 70 years ago. A fuse made of bureaucracy, a system built to defer responsibility, shelve warnings and to allow known dangers to sit untouched. But before I tell you how that was possible, let's just stop here and explain exactly what ammonium nitrate is and why it becomes so dangerous when exposed to heat, when it's confined or contaminated. Or like in this case, all of the above. This is ammonium nitrate, often abbreviated just as AM. Composed of small crystalline granules, it's a salt but not the kind that you'll find on your table. It is produced by neutralizing nitric acid with ammonia before it's dried and granulated into pellets and the resulting compound, NH4NO3, is often described as a kind of nitrogen battery, a compact and efficient way of storing nitrogen for transport and later use. In agriculture, it is a highly valued fertilizer since it supplies nitrogen in two forms, ammonium and nitrate. Vegetable gardens, hay and pastures all love it and this stuff is literally everywhere, with tens of millions of tons being produced annually across the globe. But don't worry, ports and silos aren't exploding worldwide because in its granular form it's actually relatively stable, as long as it is stored and handled correctly that is. And in that form, it is also safely used every single day. But that stability does have its limits. If it is exposed to intense heat, particularly in large quantities in confined spaces, or if it's contaminated, ammonium nitrate can become extremely dangerous. It is formally classified as an oxidizer, which means that it doesn't act as a fuel in the way flammable materials do. Instead, when heated, it can release oxygen and other reactive gases that causes nearby combustible materials to ignite more easily and burn far more intensely. But then, if the heat is high enough, ammonium nitrate also begins to chemically decompose. And that decomposition produces large volumes of hot gases, including water vapor and nitrogen-based gases, and this process releases additional heat, further fueling the decomposition. So under the right conditions, the reaction can quickly accelerate and get out of control. Contaminants such as dust, packaging or other residues increases the risk further since they add more fuel, ultimately lowering the energy needed to initiate the process and speeding up the reaction. So what would happen if a stash of ammonium nitrate would find itself in a fire den inside of a building? Well, as the temperature rises towards ammonium nitrate's melting point, around 170 degrees Celsius, the solid granules will begin to melt into a clear liquid. And when the temperature then continues to rise, it will start to decompose quicker and quicker. This will then produce large volumes of hot gases in a very, very short time. And if that happens in an open space, those gases would simply expand and dissipate. But in a confined and restricted environment, like a warehouse for example, this will instead cause pressure to build up violently. Normally, this reaction would be relatively slow, but if enough material is heated at once, the process can spiral completely out of control. Even a small amount of solid ammonium nitrate can unleash a big volume of hot gas when it's decomposing this way, and when confined that produces a powerful shockwave experienced as a massive explosive blast. Now, getting to the bottom of things like this requires piecing together loads of different information from reports, articles and international databases. And every search that we make leaves behind a trail. A trail that can be followed by entities with no good intentions. That's why my team and I use today's sponsor, NordVPN, to make sure that we stay protected when we do our research. 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Remember to use that one, nordvpn.com slash blackbox. Now remember, Nord will always give you a 30 day money back guarantee, so you don't risk anything by trying. But also, on a little bit more of a personal note, there are very few companies out there that are willing to take a risk on sponsoring a new channel like this. So I am personally really grateful for their support. Thank you, Nord. Now let's get back to the story. Now, despite its explosive potential, ammonium nitrate isn't considered a military grade explosive. But those properties does make it widely used as an industrial explosive in mining and quarrying, for example. And sadly, it has also infamously been used in several terrorist attacks and other acts of mass violence. And this is why its storage, handling and oversight matters so much. And in fact, history should have taught us as much. April 1947. The SS Grand Camp was a so-called liberty ship, originally built in the US during World War II and had then served in wartime logistics. After the war, it was initially gifted to France to aid in the reconstruction of Europe, and after that it was repurposed and turned into a regular cargo ship. On April 16, 1947, it was carrying tobacco, peanuts, ammunition, bunker oil and ammonium nitrate. But the crew had been complaining all through the voyage that the bags containing the ammonium nitrate was starting to feel warm to the touch, and that they were also getting warmer. Cargo getting hotter over time without any visible heat source was of course a red flag, and the crew didn't like it. Not one bit. But at the time, the self-heating and explosive behavior of ammonium nitrate was not fully understood, and despite it having been used to produce explosives during the war, there were only limited US federal regulations for its civilian handling. A vice president of the Texas City Railway Company later testified during the post-disaster investigations that he believed that the substance was completely safe, even comparing it to handling cement. And that belief would prove to be catastrophic. Today, we of course know that ammonium nitrate is thermally unstable under certain conditions, where a process called self-heating decomposition can occur, so when the crew noticed that the bags were self-heating, it meant that this chemical reaction had already begun. That could in turn lead to a thermal runaway, where heat keeps building and spreads through the entire mass, making it increasingly unstable. So since this was now happening, only a small spark or further disturbance would be needed to set off an explosion, which is exactly what also happened. Within an hour of the SS Grand Camp docking in Texas City longshoremen on board noticed a fire. It quickly spread and soon started getting close to the already unstable 2,000 tons of ammonium nitrate still sitting on board. Now I think you can guess what happened next. At time 09.12 the SS Grand Camp detonated. These pictures are not from Beirut in 2020, no, they are from Texas City in 1947, although the damage is remarkably similar in scale. The blast created a tsunami, estimated to be several meters high, which immediately flooded the surrounding area. The Monsanto plant, located about 90 meters or so from the dock, was completely destroyed. Windows in Houston, 60 kilometers away, were shattered and the shock was also said to be felt all the way in Louisiana, 400 kilometers away from the blast. Eventually the US Army was sent in to help with the aftermath of the disaster where 581 people had been ultimately killed and more than 5,000 injured. The 1947 Texas Port Disaster accelerated domestic regulation of ammonium nitrate in the US and it also indirectly influenced the international standards which emerged later. Even though the substance continued to be widely used, that enormous blast had been a clear warning and after that no one could say that handling this was the same as handling cement. And that brings us to Beirut in 1975. You see, warnings only really matter when people remember and apply the required lessons and in Lebanon by this time conditions had quietly begun forming for history to repeat itself. When phalangelists attacked a bus taking Palestinians to a refugee camp at Tell al-Sadr on the outskirts of Beirut on the 13th of April 1975, tensions finally boiled over. This was the tipping point for a region that had already been deeply divided along religious grounds and Lebanon erupted into a civil war, one that would last a full 15 years. During that war, Beirut was more or less divided by a green line, where on the west sat Muslim Beiruts and on the east Christian. The country was at that time governed under a power-sharing system known as the National Pact. Formed by President Jarrah al-Quri and Prime Minister Riyad al-Sol in 1943, the National Pact was an unwritten agreement which allowed top government positions to specific religious sects. It dictated that the President must be a Maronite Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of the Parliament a Shia Muslim. While this was supposed to appease the various religious groups throughout Lebanon, it increasingly favoured Christians, who retained a 6-5 parliamentary majority. That bias was based on an outdated census, but remained in place even as the population dynamics had shifted over time. So unsurprisingly, this created huge tensions, as many in the Muslim community felt underrepresented and marginalised by a government dominated by a Christian majority. And that was how the green line had come about. Beirut and Lebanon were divided culturally, spiritually and now even physically. But by 1989, Lebanon was ready for peace, or at least for the fighting and bloodshed to end. Members of the Lebanese parliament met in Taif, Saudi Arabia, where they accepted a constitutional reform package. And from that point onwards, the power of the traditionally Maronite President was reduced in relation to those of the Sunni Prime Minister and the Shia Speaker of the National Assembly. Parliamentary seats, cabinet posts as well as senior administrative positions were now to be represented by an equal ratio of Christians and Muslim officials. The Taif agreement did establish parity, but whilst the war was over, deep divisions still remained. On top of this, the country now had the difficult task ahead of rebuilding its crumbling infrastructure, estimated at a cost of several billion dollars. As the constitution aimed to balance power between Christians and Muslims, it soon became customary for all 18 religious sects in the country to have representation in the government, the military and civil service. Seats in parliament were split between Christians and Muslims, and then proportionally divided among the different denominations within each religion. All public sector jobs and government posts were also divided in a similar way, and there were many, many religious subgroups and communities to take into account. Power was shared, but with that responsibility became increasingly diffused, paralyzing institutions and allowing corruption to thrive. And although this system was originally intended to be provisional and temporary, it ended up persisting for decades and actually continues to largely define Lebanese political structure until this day. So that was the background and as the country inched closer to 2020, more and more issues began to reveal themselves, many of which were directly caused or made worse by this system. There was massive inflation, growing unemployment, daily blackouts and then, of course, along came Covid. What else could possibly go wrong? Well, the port of Beirut was in many respects a microcosm of this entire system. Until 1990, the port had been managed privately, but following the end of the civil war, management of the port had reverted back to the state, meaning that it then became subject to the same division and issues as the rest of the country. Politicians and former warlords all now had a financial stake in the port, but they couldn't agree on how to manage it. In 1993, a provisional administrative body was put together to temporarily oversee it and this new port authority had seven seats that were divided up by Lebanon's main political factions, which unsurprisingly didn't make matters any better. The ensuing power struggles meant that making any decisions was nearly impossible, which included safety. And even though the Ministry of Public Works and Transport later took over the supervision, it didn't have the authority to actually manage it. So the only thing that this did was to create further ambiguity, allowing for a confusing legal situation whenever any disputes arose. No one knew who was actually in charge. Consequently, the port, which was an incredibly valuable asset, just attracted scandal after scandal. In 2019 alone, the port of Beirut handled an estimated $20 billion worth of trade, comprising a full 78% of Lebanon's imports and 48% of its exports, with the political factions installing loyalists in prominent positions so that they could siphon off revenues and even smuggle goods into the country. Investigative journalist Riyad Kobaisi, who studied corruption at the port for over a decade, concluded that it was never intended to generate revenue for the state, but instead to fill the pockets of the mafias running the country. It was so bad that the Ministry of Public Works and Transport estimated in 2012 that Lebanon was losing more than $1.5 billion a year in tax evasion with the port, which by then was known as the Cave of Alibaba and the Forty Thieves. So this was what the landscape of Lebanon looked like when the MV Rosas entered the port in November of 2013. She was a rather unassuming single-deck general cargo vessel, originally built in Japan as a dredging ship. I'm going to try and explain how the story of this ship later came to be reported in the media, so bear with me because things are now about to get quite messy. There are quite a few conflicting reports, so let's examine a few of the possible scenarios. It was said that the Rosas was owned by Russian businessman Igor Gershushkin, and that it was transporting ammonium nitrate from the Georgian fertilizer maker Rustavi Azot to Fabrika de Explosivos Mozambique, which was, as you might have guessed, a manufacturer of explosives. Supposedly, Savaro Limited, a chemical trading company based in the United Kingdom, had purchased the ammonium nitrate from Georgia, and the Rosas had been requested to stop at Beirut's port to pick up further seismic equipment to deliver to Jordan, before continuing its journey on to Mozambique. Following several investigations, however, none of that may actually have been true. As investigators dug deeper, the story began to unravel, and it turned out that almost every part of the ship's history was disputed. Ownership records conflicted, the ship's route changed from one account to another, and its stated mission grew increasingly vague as the time went on. In the end, authorities struggled to even verify the most basic facts about what the Rosas was doing, or for whom. Absolutely nothing was clear. Some information supported the assertion that the Rosas was forced to enter the port of Beirut because of its mechanical issues and engine problems, whilst others claimed that it was due to Greshchushkin not having enough money to pay for passage through the Suez Canal. And perhaps it was a little bit of both. The ship's captain, Boris Prokoshev, later claimed that the owner of the Rosas had ordered him to stop in Beirut and pick up some additional cargo in order to pay for that passage. And if that was true, it would soon turn out that collecting additional cargo wasn't very easy for the Rosas. You see, the ship was not a roll-on, roll-off ship and was woefully unequipped for this task. When the crew tried to load it anyway, the hatches over the ammonium nitrate reportedly buckled due to the ship already carrying more weight than it was certified to do. Now, as the questions emerge over who actually owned or controlled the Rosas, investigative journalist Firas Haltum claimed to have uncovered that the company which had purchased the ammonium nitrate may have been little more than a shell entity. According to his reporting, Savaro Limited appeared to have links to two Syrian-Russian businessmen who were later sanctioned by the US government for acting on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Another name that surfaced was Shalalambous Manoli, a Cyprus-based businessman who had connections to FBNB Bank, which in turn was a financial institution later accused by US authorities of facilitating illicit transactions, including dealings linked to the Syrian government and Hezbollah. Manoli was reportedly heavily indebted to the bank, and some investigators raised the possibility that the Rosas may have been tied to these financial entanglements somehow. In any case, it remains unclear whether Manoli was the legal owner of the vessel, a beneficial owner, or simply connected through financing and debt arrangements. In summary, it was ultimately found that nearly every aspect of the ship's ownership, cargo, and intended route was obscured by overlapping corporate structures and conflicting accounts. But one of the very few things that we can say with confidence is that the Rosas was ultimately deemed unseaworthy by port state control officials in Lebanon, and that it was carrying some 2750 tons of ammonium nitrate. Following port inspections, the ship was consequently detained in Beirut by judicial order, both due to its unseaworthiness and its unpaid fees and debts, which left the Rosas stuck along with some of its crew. When it docked at the port in November of 2013, it had at least nine people on board, all Ukrainian seafarers plus one Russian, the captain. With the help of the Ukrainian consul, five of the Ukrainian crew members were repatriated relatively soon, which left four, the Russian captain and three Ukrainians, who were required to stay behind to look after the dangerous cargo. And this poor skeleton crew claimed to have been owned up to $200,000 in unpaid wages, on top of being forced to stay. And they ended up being stuck on that rotting, sinking ship for nearly a year. Meanwhile, it kept collecting port fees and fines for refusing cargo, adding up to $100,000. So Igor Grishushkin reportedly declared bankruptcy and just abandoned the crew and the ship in Beirut. Eventually, though, lawyers acting on behalf of the remaining four crew members applied for their repatriation on compassionate grounds, and an urgent matter judge subsequently issued an order permitting them to return home. After that, the MV Rosas was left to decay and eventually succumbed to its flaws. You see, it turns out that there was a small hole in the hull, and without the crew there to patch it up and pump out seawater, it sank in 2018. But not before its cargo had been removed to be stored in hangar 12 at the port. Now, official correspondence found that Ministry of Public Works and Transport officials initially did not accurately describe the risks of the Rosas' cargo, nor did anyone investigate the potential danger that it posed. What this meant was that the 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate was now left in the woefully unprepared hangar 12, together with other flammable and explosive materials, inside of a densely populated urban area for six years. Now I can tell you what should have happened next. Several precautions should have been taken. Because while there were no strict laws on the exact handling of ammonium nitrate, there were regulations on workplace safety. A decree number 11802, issued in February 2004, explicitly set health and safety obligations for workplaces handling hazardous materials. And it wasn't like the existence or dangers of this ammonium nitrate was a secret either. The port authority knew that AN was being stored where it was, and they also knew how badly it was being kept, and exactly how dangerous it could be. So in a case like this, specialists should have been called in to create a detailed and technical risk assessment. There should also have been standard interim controls, such as daily monitoring, fire watch, and clear signage should have been implemented until a permanent solution could be found. And finally, the ammonium nitrate should have been transported or re-exported to a safer location, so there's just no excuse for allowing it to stay in decaying bags in a warehouse full of fireworks so close to an urban center. Now those of you who are familiar with my work over on MetroPilot, our sister channel, will know about the Swiss cheese model. In that model, safety is shown as being guaranteed by several safety barriers, like national and company regulations, procedures, and personal conduct. Each of those layers will have small holes in them, like cheese does, and it's only when those holes all line up that an accident will happen. But in this case, those barriers seem to have been mostly holes. Now, officials did apparently repeatedly propose selling, re-exporting, or disposing of the ammonium nitrate, but each attempt failed. Not because action was impossible, but because it was never properly authorized, completed, or followed up. And the original owners of the ammonium nitrate, whoever they were, obviously couldn't be relied on either. They had effectively abandoned their cargo and were making no attempts to collect or reclaim it. A very strange fact in this story, though, is that whilst it is established that some 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate had been offloaded from the Rosas, the FBI investigation following the explosion estimated that only about 552 metric tons actually detonated. Which leaves a huge discrepancy between the offloaded amount, what was detonated, and what went somewhere else. No one has ever been able to establish exactly what happened to that remainder, and no comprehensive inventory was ever completed. Now, there are many theories around this, but had the missing ammonium nitrate still been in Warehouse 12 on that fateful day, it is quite possible that the explosion could have been even more devastating. In any case, investigations and rights groups identified serious failures in both the Ministry of Public Works and Transport, which oversaw the Port Authority, as well as the Ministry of Finance, which oversees customs, in how this ammonium nitrate had been handled and secured. But it wasn't just the Port Authority that could have done something about this. Ministries of Customs, Judiciary and various other security agencies all knew about this ammonium nitrate, and they knew how catastrophic it could be. But no safety measures were effectively carried out anyway. In fact, when the cargo was being offloaded in 2014, the head of the Manifest Department at the port sent a letter to his superior, the head of the Port of Beirut Service. In that letter, he told her that the ammonium nitrate should be handed over to the Lebanese Army or re-exported to – and I am quoting here – avoid any potential disaster. In addition, on November 13, 2014, the Beirut Harbour Master was put in charge of the cargo in Warehouse 12, and despite being fully in charge, he nevertheless claimed that he couldn't do anything, as the warehouse were under the authority of the Customs Administration and the Port Authority. Evidence also indicates that many of Lebanon's senior leaders, including President Michel Aoun, then Prime Minister Hassan Diab, among others, were informed of the risks posed by the material, but still failed to take any actions to protect the public. So this system didn't fail all at once, no, it failed slowly, until a single spark was all that was needed in order to unleash disaster. And that, finally, takes us back to the dock on August 4, 2020. According to reports, the Port Authority had sent in some construction workers to fix some structural damage, unsupervised, and they were carrying out some welding repairs at around time Then, at some point, a fire started in the vicinity of these works, and whilst the source of the fire and its initial causes remains unclear, welding so close to where ammonium nitrate and other flammable materials were stored may not have been the best idea – at least not without precautions. Anyway, by time 1745, Warehouse 12 was on fire, and the flames quickly reached the ammonium nitrate sitting in its rotting, torn bags inside. As the temperature climbed beyond the ammonium nitrate's melting point, the material likely first transitioned from a solid to a liquid, and the continued heating then drove it towards rapid decomposition, a reaction that released further heat as it accelerated, feeding on itself. The ensuing, rapidly expanding gases soon generated enormous pressure, and with nowhere to escape, that pressure collapsed into a devastating shockwave. A fireball now engulfed the port. The silos, who were towering above holding some 108,000 tons of grain, enough to make bread for up to 1.7 million people, were immediately torn apart. Nine workers were still inside at the time of the blast, and their remains were never recovered, and that also applied for the initial fire response team, who had been sent to fight the fire. They were also killed instantly. The shockwave then travelled faster than the speed of sound, tearing through the city and levelling entire building blocks. It then expanded up to 10 km away, where it blew out the windows of the city's airport, and the blast itself was heard in Cyprus, over 200 km away. The US Geological Survey recorded the blast as a 3.3 magnitude seismic event. In the space of just a few seconds, 300,000 people were suddenly made homeless, 7,000 were injured, and 218 lost their lives. Tens of thousands of buildings, homes, places of work and worship, schools and hospitals were all reduced to rubble and shattered glass. Estimates suggest that the explosion was equivalent to 1,000 to 1,500 tons of TNT, almost one-tenth of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. Or put another way, it was around 118 times bigger than the massive Ordnance Air Blast, the so-called mother of all bombs, developed by the US military, which is one of the largest conventional munitions in the world. So where the warehouse had been was now a smoking crater, which soon filled with the seawater from the nearby Mediterranean. For many around the world, the blast was just a terrifying image on a screen. But for others, it was the moment that split their lives in two. Pamela Zeynon regained consciousness on the floor in the hospital where she worked. She had been knocked out by the collapsing ceiling, and for a moment she was in a kind of daze. Nothing made any sense to her, but she then remembered the newborn babies. She removed the debris lying on top of her and rushed to find the babies in their destroyed incubators, who were also under the rubble, but thankfully safe. She took them up and carried them in her arms down three flights of stairs through the blackout, before eventually emerging on the streets of Beirut, which had now changed dramatically. After that, she walked five kilometers with the three premature newborns clutched to her body until she found a hospital with a single incubator available, which undoubtedly saved their lives. A few blocks away, Dr Isra Seblani had been smiling and posting for wedding photos. Now she had flown back to her native Beirut so she could have the ceremony at home, and when the blast hit, it threw her clean across the square. This is the photograph taken by Pamela Zeynon in that desperate moment as she saved the newborns. That photograph, alongside the footage of Dr Seblani, spread across the world and soon became powerful symbols of the explosion and its enormous human costs. With the city in ruins and sirens blazing, rescue efforts started immediately, and the citizens of Beirut began the painful process of sifting through the debris. Emergency services were almost immediately overwhelmed, and local hospitals were flooded with casualties, with the less injured arriving first by foot or transportation, and the more serious injured coming in later by ambulance. St George University Medical Center, where Pamela Zeynon worked, as well as Verdier and Carantina Hospital were rendered completely non-functional, which removed over 500 patients' beds just as they were most badly needed. On top of this, the port also contained the largest national stockpile of medications, as well as 17 containers of medical supplies, which now had been either completely destroyed or partially damaged. And it wasn't just hospitals who were affected either. Over 2,000 doctors' offices and clinics were damaged by the explosion. The government of Lebanon quickly declared a state of emergency and launched an immediate appeal for disaster assistance from the international community. The Lebanese army snapped into action, forming an incident command structure to oversee disaster response activities, which included operations, logistics, planning, finance and administration. They soon secured the blast area perimeter, allowing for investigation teams and search and rescue operations to immediately begin, with the first priority obviously being to find any survivors in the immediate blast radius. Overnight rescue efforts were then unfortunately held up by blackouts and the lack of electricity. But just over a week later, by August 12th, there was at least five international hospitals operating in Beirut, mostly set up independently and run by military healthcare teams from Russia, Jordan, Morocco and Iran. The long cleanup had now begun, and as it did, people started to demand an explanation. The day after the explosion, Prime Minister Hassan Diab's government had announced that a domestic investigation into the blast would be carried out, which promised to identify those responsible within five days. But that investigation was widely seen as lacking independence, since it was run by Lebanese institutions, deeply entangled in the same political system accused of the negligence. In fact, many Lebanese wanted their government to have nothing to do with this investigation. So, perhaps sensing a different kind of power kick, a political one that threatened to destabilize the region, the US soon announced that the FBI would be joining the investigation, along with French forensic teams. Which they actually did after a formal invitation from the Lebanese government. This investigation ultimately resulted in the arrest of around 20 low- and mid-level port and customs officials, but top political leaders were not even questioned. And that was despite Diab himself having been formally told of the ammonium nitrate hazard months before the explosion. He insisted that he was being scapegoated, but nonetheless eventually resigned. More than five years on, victims are still waiting for the insurance payouts that they thought they would get. Lebanon and Beirut still suffer from the same corrupt political system that failed to take the measures required to protect its people, and they also wait for those responsible to take accountability. Reconstruction was mostly carried out by residents and business owners, being supported by the Lebanese expat community. So, what can we learn from all of this then? What will be the recommendations coming out of this investigation? Well, the dangers surrounding the storage and use of ammonium nitrate was already well known and understood before this blast happened. So, the enforcement of existing rules and regulations is not a paper-pushing exercise that can be ignored or handed down the line. Now, those rules are there to save lives, and dangerous chemicals will not care about red tape, religious divides, or corruption. They will just continue to form bonds and react nonetheless. So, if you are in a profession that handles them, please keep that in mind, and let's together make sure that this story never repeats itself again. Now, this was the very first episode of my new channel, Black Box, where we will use the same ethos and similar format as MentorPilot to tell stories of other accidents and incidents from all walks of life. We released this video here on MentorPilot just to give you a taste of what's to come, but to actually see that, you will have to click over to Black Box and subscribe over there, because the next episode will be released on Thursday the 9th of April. Or, if you want to see that right now, it is already available to our Patreons. So, just scan this QR code or go to patreon.com join MentorPilot to watch it. Here's a quick preview. There is a dam in northern Italy, which stands tall over a beautiful valley below. You can still walk across it as part of official tours, but it no longer holds back any water and it hasn't produced any electricity for decades. Even though its structure stands perfectly fine, it was once the epicenter for one of the biggest dam disasters in modern history. My name is Petter Hörnfeldt and you're watching MentorPilot and Black Box. Have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time. Bye-bye!