I'm heading out to Beirut this morning.
I'm being deployed as part of the SARAID rescue team, helping to assess buildings for damage and search for any survivors. SARAID is a UK charity, made up of unpaid volunteers from all walks of life. If you want to learn more about the team then take a look at our website www.saraid.org.
It's going to be the same, but different from the normal earthquake work we do, but hopfully we'll be able to bring some relief to the people there.
Well done Kris, take care of yourself and those affected by this disaster.
Well done to you and your colleagues, Kris.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
Well done Kris to you and your colleagues, hope everyone stays safe.
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Hopefully they come out of this for the better.
Lovely people and a beautiful country with plenty going for it and as many Lebanese have said they just want to be left alone. Encouraging that protesters are from all of society and not organised on religious lines as they would be elsewhere in the ME. Just hope violence doesn’t increase leading to outside intervention.
I arrived back from Beirut last night.
Thank you all for your kind wishes and comments.<br><br>The city is slowly beginning to recover after this horrendous event, but everywhere we went we were walmly welcomed with smiling faces, thanks and good wishes. The Lebanese people are fantastic.
For obvious reasons, taking general pictures wasn't a priority, never the less there was time for some images as part of our work.
The Explosion site
Local feeling was running high
(SARAID are an Independent NGO with no political affiliations. Comments in the two pictures below are those of Lebanese locals, not of SARAID)
Some of the damage in the Blast Zone
The Disaster Coordination "Office" I was running
Yours truly
and, as requested, the only picture I could find of the watch I wore (purchased from this very forum)
Last edited by Kris; 14th August 2020 at 17:09.
Posted with Eddie's very kind permission
The cost of deploying to Beirut cost SARAID in the region of £10,000. As a small, independent charity, we receive no government funding or lottery support, instead we rely entirely on fundraising carried out by the same members who deploy on rescue missions, and the generosity of the public.
SARAID has no paid staff, expensive offices etc. Every penny donated goes direclty to helping us save lives. All SARAID members give their time freely (often at cost to themselves - I'm now in 2 weeks quarantine / isolation).
If you would like to make a donation and help support us, it would be greatfully received and very much appreciated !!!
Please use the Justgiving link below:
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/kris-hurley
THANK YOU !
Good on ya Kris,
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
Well done to you and your team.
R
Ignorance breeds Fear. Fear breeds Hatred. Hatred breeds Ignorance. Break the chain.
Great job Kris and thanks for sharing the link.
Well done Kris. I've been on a few calls this week with teams who have deployed with the Emergency Telecoms Cluster and Telecoms Sans Frontieres (you may even have availed of some of their services). Beirut has an amazing capacity to survive these episodes but it really didn't need another one.
In the Sotadic Zone, apparently.
Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Link...Beirut explosion in 4K slow motion.
The text is worth reading too.
Amazing footage shows the chemicals exploding in one huge blast, never seen anything like it.
A huge number of lives ruined in an instance.
It’s going to take a long time for the area to recover from this incident.
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"Nemeth's footage was captured on the terrace of his home, on the 13th floor of building next to St George Hospital, only 850 meters from the explosion." This link shows drone footage of that hospital
Bloody terrifying, makes ''disaster movies'' look tame,
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
'Populism, the last refuge of a Tory scoundrel'.
That slo mo footage is terrifying, as has been said disaster movie stuff, no doubt will be made at some point. You can see all the small explosions which if I’m not much mistaken was small munitions and fireworks going up before the really Big Bang
Wishing Beirut a speedy recovery from this and might make the authorities think twice about storing things this dangerous so close to a dense population
Wholly avoidable and shame on those responsible for the oversights that led to it really
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The sounds and star like projectiles seem like individual fireworks amongst a mass blaze and I don't think that 'pockets' of NH4NO3 could react without involving the whole mass. (If I recall correctly it was stored stacked in large bags.)
Then there is this...Beirut explosions: Port hanger ‘known to be dangerous’ with fireworks stored alongside stockpile, workers confirm.
What amazing is not more people died, when you see the size of the blast zone.
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The grain store, immeadiately behind the warehouse saved the city and countless lives. When we assessed what was left of the site it became clear (confirmed by explosives experts) that the grain acted like a "blast wall" absorbing a lot of the energy and blast wave in that direction.
Had it not been there, the devastation and lives lost would have been much much worse.
The sad thing is that it sved countless lives, but in doing so, the country lost a lot of its food supply for the year, the consequences of that are yet to be fully seen
You can see the remains of the grain store, including the relatively intact rear wall, in this picture I took of the explosion site. Some of the grain stored in the silo can be seen in front of the wall. It was this grain, able to shift and move within the silo that absorbed the blast .
Damn. That was impressive analysis
Drone footage of the site via Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/p/CHfQuA3p...d=a20ctjmjxttt
https://www.instagram.com/p/CGUTU87J...=17vvswucafidf