Beirut
Firefighters evacuate a wounded man from the scene of an explosion at the port in Beirut on August 4, 2020.
ANWAR AMRO/AFP via Getty Images
  • A rescue team is searching for potential survivors in the rubble of destroyed buildings, a month after an explosion went off in Beirut, The New York Times reported. 
  • A Chilean rescue team detected a human pulse under the rubble. 
  • No one was found as of Friday, but searchers said they would attempt again on Saturday. 
  • Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

A Chilean rescue team detected a slow pulse underneath rubble in Beirut a month after a devasting explosion killed as almost 200 people and injured thousands, The New York Times reported. 

The August 4 blast was caused after more than 2,750 metric tons of ammonium nitrate that were stored at a warehouse where it ignited. The ammonium was improperly stored in the port since 2014.

A dog named Flash smelled something under the rubble, and the searchers who came in this week from Chile confirmed that they detected a human pulse, according to The Times.

Flash detected the pulse under a destroyed building between Gemmayze and Mar Mikhael on Wednesday, the BBC reported.

The dog again signaled that there was a pulse on Thursday and then specialist sensor equipment also picked up on the pulse in the area. 

 

On Friday, Francisco Lermanda, the team's head searcher said slow breathing was detected under almost 10 feet of the rubble, the BBC reported.

However, the team had to yet to find anyone on Friday and said they'd continue their search on Saturday. 

Lermanda said it's too early to know if anyone was alive or dead under the rubble. 

AlJazeera reporter, Timour Azhari said in a tweet that hundred of residents were on the scene on Friday were told to be silent as the team continued to search for survivors. 

The blast in Beirut damaged at least 25,000 homes so badly that they're no longer habitable, at a time when the country's economy was under collapse. 

Rebecca Mouawad, a volunteer who helped clean up Beirut after the clash told Insider last month, that she was staying with family in a village about 30 minutes outside of Beirut and was able to hear the blast. 

"It was really shocking and it was really sad not just to see the building destroyed but also you know that people are still missing, many people lost their lives," Mouawad said about the state of Beirut a few days after the blast. "People who were in the street - they were lost. They were confused. The facial expressions that I saw on people's face was like, they were really lost and confused and everything was destroyed."

Mouawad said she started handing out food kits and then walked around asking people who needed help cleaning. She described strangers asking for help as well as cleaning or assisting people whose homes were destroyed. 

Mouawad, who works with the International Rescue Committee in Beirut said that non-governmental organizations have been working to meet the urgent need of the most vulnerable, but she thinks it'll be a while before Beirut and Lebanon as a whole recover. 

"I think it's going to take so much time like we already had the economic crisis and we're saying that this crisis is going to take maybe 10 years for Lebanon to overcome this problem. Now, then we have COVID-19 and the Beritu blast, I think it's gonna, it's going to take so much time like we're talking maybe about maybe five years really to get back up on our feet," she said. 

Lebanon was already dealing with multiple crises before the explosion, including the exponential devaluation of its currency the lira. 

Samer Bolbol, a Beirut resident, told Insider before the explosion that people were already feeling "hopeless" because of the economic situation. 

Officials estimated it would cost $15 billion to fix the damage from the blast, The Washington Post reported.

Lebanon's cabinet resigned also resigned about a week after the explosion. President Michel Aoun, however, asked Prime Minister Hassan to stay in the post until a new government can be formed. 

The country also went into a two-week lockdown after coronavirus cases surged following the blast. Several hospitals were badly damaged or destroyed in the blast that some children who were being treated for cancer in some of these facilities lost access to their care. 

 

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