The official confusion in dealing with the Beirut port explosion disaster on August 4th, 2020, which was not managed according to the requirements of the “Sendai” disaster risk management agreement, signed by Lebanon in 2015, was evident amid the lack of coordination among all agencies operating in the field.
This apparent confusion by each and everyone, is not exclusive nor new to all ministries and departments which disengaged themselves from the responsibility of a national disaster of this magnitude. Despite Lebanon's remarkable international work in preparing national disaster management plans over the past five years, the failure to activate the work of the Disaster Risk Management Unit has negatively impacted the disaster response, resulting in a delay in commissioning “the Lebanese Army to manage the disaster the next day”, according to a local media report.
The lack of coordination between the agencies has negatively affected the work of the rescue teams working in the field. The source adds that “in the first 48 hours, civil defense teams were not equipped with enough flashlights and rescue equipment, which was a major obstacle in searching for survivors in the rubble, forcing them to stop searching at night and rescue survivors using primitive methods and mobile phone detectors". Furthermore, "the lack of preventive instructions on the emerging COVID-19 virus (Coronavirus), contributed to raise the number of infections among men and women volunteers in the rubble removal operations. "
There are several factors which led to the explosion, and the absence of the security authorities in performing their duties which will be revealed by the investigation, did not contribute to alleviating the risks. The same source stresses that "no one has been negligent in responding to the disaster, but the confusion of powers between official agencies and the failure to implement response plans designed to deal with disasters has had a negative impact on all operations," starting with "the lack of distribution of roles in establishing the security perimeter, determining search and rescue mechanisms for survivors, identifying bodies, obtaining DNA samples, as well as not establishing a central communications center."
Another source adds that "the State has not yet assessed the "multiple risks" to determine whether the explosion occurred naturally or was a deliberate act", due to "the absence of a joint operations room between all relief, scientific and security agencies."
The source also points out that, "it would have been possible to improve the response to the disaster if disaster-trained teams in all sectors had been used," especially since "a similar simulation took place a few years ago to train in response to a disaster of an explosion in a public facility," but the scene of “official confusion brought back to mind the scene of the Fassouh building collapse on the night of December 15, 2012 in Ashrafieh, and the death of 27 people at that time due to lack of coordination.”
Does Beirut municipality bear partial responsibility?
Locally, Beirut municipality bears partial responsibility for the port explosion, along with other official agencies. Article 49 of the Municipalities Law defines that the responsibility of “the municipal council is to monitor the functioning of public utilities and to prepare reports on their work progress to the relevant departments” (including the port of Beirut), as Dr. André Sleiman, representative of the “Democracy Reporting International in Lebanon” organization points out in an exclusive interview. He adds that the task of "the head of the executive authority in Beirut municipality, namely the Governor, is to focus on means to prevent fires, explosions and water intrusion, organize the fire service, monitor the storage locations of explosive materials and fuel, determine their quantities, how to store them, and ways of prevention, in accordance with Article 74 of the same law."
Sleiman points out that the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) has already trained relevant municipal authorities on how to deal with disasters within the “Comprehensive Urban Resilience Masterplan for the City of Beirut” [i] program in 2018, with $1.1 million in funding, for the training on flexibility and urban resilience, but "it was not applied when the disaster occurred."
The Order of Engineers and Architects conducts a amage survey
Organizations and unions did not stand idly by watching the devastation of Beirut. 1,200 engineers from the Order of Engineers and Architects volunteered to help the "Lebanese Army" conduct a survey of the damaged residential facilities and bridges. Engineer Firas Mourtada, President of the Urban Planners Association at the Order, explained in an exclusive interview that "40 teams of engineers assisted the army to survey the damage done to the facilities, and they were distributed over 97 areas, to survey more than 1500 buildings in addition to inspecting the bridges. The information was uploaded to a private server on the internet managed by the Order and the army through a mobile application, in addition to forming a joint operations room between them", which will help local and international stakeholders in facilitating the reconstruction of destroyed buildings.
What to do?
After the disaster, it becomes imperative to work on "rebuilding better", according to the informed source, adding that "there is a necessity to compensate the economic and psychological victims of the explosion in the long term, and to help move the economic wheel by supporting emerging small and medium-sized companies, and to re-create jobs for all people who lost their jobs and places of work," explaining that “ residential buildings, government and private centers, must be rebuilt in a more solid engineering manner, since they are the most vulnerable to tsunamis and earthquakes”