[ad_1]
A specialized sensing device detected a pulse under a leveled building on Thursday between the Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhail districts, raising hopes that a survivor could be found more than four weeks after the disaster that killed at least 191 people.
Lebanese and Chilean rescuers excavate the rubble of a badly damaged building in Beirut, the Lebanese capital, looking for possible survivors of a mega-explosion in the adjacent port a month ago, after scanners detected a pulse, earlier September 4, 2020. Image: AFP
BEIRUT – Emergency crews searched the rubble Friday for a possible survivor in Beirut after the detection of a pulse drew crowds hoping for a miracle a month after a devastating explosion.
“We have excavated rubble, but we have not yet reached a conclusion,” said George Abou Moussa of Lebanon’s civil defense.
A specialized sensing device detected a pulse under a leveled building on Thursday between the Gemmayzeh and Mar Mikhail districts, raising hopes that a survivor could be found more than four weeks after the disaster that killed at least 191 people.
Chilean rescuers and Lebanese civil defense teams removed chunks of debris with their bare hands on Friday morning, resuming an operation that they had briefly stopped overnight, an AFP photographer said.
The pulse they detected on Friday had already slowed significantly compared to an earlier recording, said Nicholas Saade, who coordinates between Chilean rescue teams and their Lebanese counterparts.
“After removing the large pieces, we scanned again for heartbeats or respiration (and) it showed low heartbeat / respiration levels” of seven per minute, he told AFP.
“The previous reading was 16-18,” he added.
Using their hands and shovels, rescuers moved in the “direction of the signal,” trying to find a tunnel or entry point that would give them access to a “survivor or corpse,” Saade said, without elaborating on the duration. of the entire process. I could drink.
SEARCH STOPPED DOWNLOAD SHOUT
Lebanon, already mired in an economic crisis before the August 4 port explosion ripped through parts of the capital, is not equipped for disaster management.
The country lacks the equipment and experience to handle advanced search and rescue operations that now have the support of experts from Chile, France and the United States.
Chileans have been praised as heroes by many Lebanese.
They recently arrived with a sniffer dog trained to find humans, as well as advanced thermal scanners that can detect heartbeat and respiration.
In a statement on Friday, the Lebanese army said search and rescue operations had been halted for two hours the previous day because pieces of the building’s wall could fall on emergency workers.
Rescue teams had resumed work at 10.30pm GMT after military engineers with the help of two cranes “managed to secure the building to resume work,” according to the statement.
The temporary suspension sparked protests on social media.
“There is a beating heart in Mar Mikhail, and there are heartless officials who decided to stop the rescue operation,” activist Zahia Awad said on Twitter.
Download the EWN app on your iOS or Android device.
[ad_2]
