cylinders of old grain silos, seriously damaged by the double explosion in the port of Beirut, August 4, 2020, collapsed.
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The coincidence is sinister and barely believable: on the eve of the commemoration of the blast which destroyed a part of Beirut, two years ago, a limited part of the grain silos of the port collapsed on Sunday July 31, in a huge cloud of dust. This building, about fifty meters high, had been heavily damaged by the double deadly explosion on August 4, 2020; By absorbing part of the breath, he had served as a rampart in the western part of the capital. Impressive silhouette dominating the port, in the heart of the capital, the silos have become an emblem of the cataclysm caused by the detonation of a huge stock of ammonium nitrate kept without precaution around housing.
In recent days, when a fire had recently moved into the building, television cameras were watching for the fall of the structure, which the authorities considered imminent. The spectacular collapse, although partial, occurring on Sunday, touching the unstable part of the whole, did not prevent Lebanese from coming to photograph the blackened facade and the rubble to its foot, on the side of the sea. The scene, then , is surprising: onlookers are there, the face protected by a simple mask. The air turns your head. A helicopter repeatedly flies up silos, dropping water.
“It’s been three weeks since we live in a burned smell, which is surely very harmful! Let us finish with this fire!”, Says Omar (he only gave his first name), a resident of Quarantine, neighboring district at the port. He did not hear the noise of partial collapse, fast: it is video, shared on social networks, which alerted it.
lack of transparency
In this part of the city, in recent days, many speculate on an intentional origin of repeated fires which declared themselves, in early July, within the old wheat reserve. The lack of transparency of the authorities feeding the confusion a little more. According to the outgoing government of the Prime Minister, Najib Mikati, the fire was caused by the fermentation of cereals under the effect of the heat of the summer. Thousands of tonnes were not released after the explosion, due to the fears of collapse of the structure. The fire accelerated the inclination of the building, weakened.