Scary Carrie's | Beirut in Ruins: Bodies in the Streets

A massive explosion in Lebanon’s capital of Beirut on August 4th, 2020 has left the city in ruins. Hundreds are dead and thousands more are injured after a fire at the city’s main port spread to a warehouse that housed a forgotten stock pile of 2750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate.

75 years after Hiroshima’s nuclear explosion we have one of the biggest explosions caught on film this century and it was still only 10% of the explosive yield with no nuclear fallout, yet the devastation is unimaginable.

300000 people, or 5% of the country’s total population, became homeless in an instant. At least 10 firefighters are missing, according to the city’s governor Marwan Abboud, who said the scene reminded him of “Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

“In my life I haven’t seen destruction on this scale,” Abboud said. “This is a national catastrophe.”

The explosion was felt 100s of miles away and registered as a 3.3 earthquake. The capital’s port, which brings in 80% of Lebanons food supply, is completely destroyed and hospitals which were already overwhelmed with Caronavirus patients are now overflowing. One hospital, St. George, 1km away was completely destroyed.

A map showing the city’s population density overlayed with a blast radius ruler.

Videos from bystanders watching the explosion have gone viral but so to have media of the destruction and death that now line the streets of what was once considered the Paris of the middle east.

This is an actively developing story so we will update here as more information emerges.