Woman Rising from Rubble: Aftermath of Lebanon Explosion


Everyone heard about the last huge explosion of Beirut Port that occurred in the 4th of August 2020, where a large amount of ammonium Nitrate stored at the port of the Lebanese capital exploded and caused at least 203 deaths and over 6500 injuries.

The explosion was preceded by a fire in the same warehouse where people ran and uploaded videos that showed accidently the seconds of the blast thinking that was only a fire then they shocked by the horrible sound and scene.

That disaster was also heard in many nearby countries and it was considered one of the most powerful non-nuclear explosions in history. Therefore, the size of economic losses was around $7.5 billion according to the Association of Insurance Companies in Lebanon (ACAL).

The damage affected over half of Beirut, approximately ninety percent of the hotels in the city and three hospitals were completely destroyed. Due to the large echo of the blast houses, buildings and many other destructions filled the place with shrapnel, smoke, glasses, dust and rubble.

Moreover, scenes of grieve, pain and wailing were mostly watched in the faces of people especially women whom lost their children, husband and brother. It is mainly related to female status because whoever was the died person or the victim he is directly related to women.

In the aftermath, protests blew up their deep pain, anger and sadness across Lebanon against the government for their failure to prevent the disaster.

 

Feelings Spread Out

For us, we as women are more sensitive and we feel deeply everything. It was obvious that tears filled everywhere crying their losses, aches and death.

Amazingly, the most relevant event was when people thought to rise up again, refused to give up to the dark and started to plan how they would clean physically and emotionally the effect of the destruction.

From the first week of the explosion, civilians: children, adolescents, adults and elderly from different gender and side of the country gathered in hundreds to volunteer to clean up the debris inside homes, businesses area and streets.

Buses’ drivers decided to transport people with their cleaners to the damaged areas, most of them were women who had faith in a sun that will rise again throughout the black smoke.

In addition, a gentle initiative from young women step up to cook and offer food, for example, a 17-year-old girl was a volunteer made with others 400 hot meals everyday which are handed out to those areas affected by the blasts. Others helped in community cleanup efforts, packaging and distributing food parcels.

 

Role of Woman

You could watch clearly the large number of women on T. Vs, social media and channels that filled the place and the streets, many searched for their human lost others shouted for their died relatives.

The most seen images were the ones of the running nurses and doctors to save lives, with the help of the paramedics and fire fighters. In a near hospital there was a young nurse who held the three babies in the destroyed hospital, and in the other side, the image of a volunteer in the civil defense who offered her soul to protect people from fire.

More and more that mother who waited to call her son’s name from the missing under the ruins and that who was observing the fire from the balcony and by a glance became an ash.

For sure, men in the blast gave a lot of sacrifices but there was at least one woman who lost a baby, a male member like her friend, brother, husband or father which means the lost was more and more painful because in general women are more emotional than men.

 

Statue of Rising Up

An amazing famous quote said:” What defines us is how well rise after falling” where the power is essentially not in the fall, the power, the strength, the glory and success is in the rising. That what women in Beirut and its outskirts did.

It was known that over 25,000 homes have been damaged so badly. Thus, windows, doors, aluminum, glass, iron and many other materials filled the place. Cleaning up happened rapidly and it was amazing but the brilliant idea is to build that wonderful Statue of the fighter woman. 

They collected the destruction substances of port area, damage and power all together to rise up again. In fact, that statue wasn’t only of matters but it was raised by faith, hope and strength. A summation of feelings and emotions connected together through a forceful giant structure.

All together one hand shared the construction, starting from gathering the losses then the build up and finally the stand up of the statue. What the artist “Hayat Nazer” did was an evident example of loving life and how the will inside the Lebanese hearts ensure to inspire others.

For sure, it is hard and extremely painful to experience such a crisis but sitting and watching will never change the view unless that ache pushes you to shine and makes you create something out of your inner soul that really touches all hearts and takes out minds out of astonish.

Hopefully, everyone who saw the rising woman statue got an optimistic state of mind that would be based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one’s life or the world at large.

Kindly note is the presence of a big clock on the side of the statue pointed to (6:08) the time of the explosion, for the Lebanese that time indicated the grieve, the pain but also the reunion of all the members to complete their lives.

Let you considered this enormous eruption as a lesson to all humans. To teach you how deep you can cry on lost and how deep you can rise up again. It was a magnificent sweet action to make such a statue to always remember the scene and to be inspired to change any bad idea about despair.


Written by – Rayan Issa

Edited by – Adrija Saha