Emotional ending in Beirut as rescuers end search – CNN

(CNN) – Rescuers were unable to find a survivor under a mountain of rubble in Beirut after a three-day search, extinguishing hopes of locating a missing person a month after an explosion devastated the city.

On Saturday night, locals applauded the rescuers, led by a Chilean search and rescue team, after they announced that the search was 95% complete and that they ruled out signs of life. “Unfortunately, today we can say that there are no signs of life inside the building,” Francisco Lermanda, head of Topos, the Chilean rescue team, told reporters at a press conference.

For three days, people from all over Lebanon were glued to their television screens, anticipating news of a possible survivor in the Mikhaeal Sea, near the epicenter of the August 4 explosion. The Chilean team, Topos, said Thursday that its search dog and its sensors had detected signs of life in the rubble of a destroyed building in eastern Beirut. It was an announcement that drew crowds of volunteers, solidarity protesters, and local and international press coverage.

Many said it was not the happy ending they hoped for, but others argued that the result was ideal. “It was a happy ending,” said Melissa Fathallah, activist and founder of Bayte Baytak, an initiative to house Lebanese health workers during the COVID-19 crisis. Did we really want to add another name to the list of people who sadly died in this? I see it as a positive because we didn’t have to add one more name. We didn’t have to find another missing person. “

Fathallah initially went to the site of the search operation on Thursday to protest the Lebanese military decision to temporarily suspend the mission. She later became a volunteer in the rescue effort after the military retracted the decision and invited some of the protesters, including Fathallah, to join the operation.

“We didn’t stop until we had exhausted all options and there was not a 0.01% chance that someone would be there,” Fathallah said.

At the beginning of the mission, a Lebanese Civil Defense team expressed pessimism that search and rescue would find a survivor, or even a dead body. “There is a 99% chance that we won’t find anything,” George Abu Musa, head of civil defense operations, told CNN on Thursday night.

But Topos and local rescuers, including Civil Defense, worked slowly through the rubble, digging tunnels and excavating layers of limestone and rubble. The Chilean team’s sensors continued to detect respiratory cycles, which they called “signs of life,” emanating from the destroyed building. Those signals, the Topos team now says, could have come from rescuers themselves or from outside phone jamming.

“We detect respiration around 3 am, an exhalation. But after reviewing the area, we realized that this exhalation was from our own rescuers who had entered the first floor hours earlier. The device is very sensitive, therefore minimal exhalation will be detected, ”explained Lermanda on Saturday night.

They were three days full of emotions where hopes rested mainly on a search dog named Flash and a sensory machine, and ignored the low expectations set by local authorities. Confidence in state officials has waned since a popular uprising that began last October against government corruption gripped the country. The August 4 explosion has fanned the flames of public discontent.

The explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate tore through the Lebanese capital on August 4, killing 190 people, injuring more than 6,000 and leaving more than 300,000 displaced from their homes. The blast destroyed much of Beirut’s eastern coastal area.

The Topos Chile rescue team said they will carry out other operations in Beirut if the Lebanese government asks them to.

“We would like to go everywhere, but we are respectful of governments and people,” Lermanda assured. “If they ask us to go anywhere, to ground zero (the port) or to a building where someone disappeared, that’s where we go.”

Tension on site

The operation unleashed an emotional rollercoaster for the locals involved in the mission. When Thursday’s search was temporarily suspended due to concerns that a wall could collapse and endanger the lives of the rescue team, a protest of about 100 people broke out off-site.

That breath is our last breath. It is our last hope. Everyone should be ashamed, ”Atallah shouted on Thursday night. A woman was heard saying, “We’ve been here for a month, can’t you stay up one night?”

Crowds arrived at the site of the rescue effort after the Chilean team had left, demanding an immediate resumption of the operation. One woman said she called for a tow truck, while other protesters climbed through the rubble offering to search for the body themselves.

The tension continued until soldiers told protesters that the team and their gear would return to the site imminently. The next day, many of those protesters joined the rescue effort under the coordination of the military. The mood changed. Protesters and members of the military who had previously been on opposite sides of a military cordon were now working together.

And after the mission ended, volunteers reported that there was a moment of reflection on the relative lack of faith in the initial Civil Defense assessment, with a prominent Civil Defense worker, Youssef Mallah, berating the activists for their lack. trusted by local rescuers.

«I love what the Chileans did. I have the utmost respect for them, ”Atallah said. “But we have to give more credit to the Civil Defense. We forget that these people are actually volunteers and that if someone is going to take the time to do what they do and sacrifice for the rest of us, congratulations.

“If ever there was a reason for him not to leave the country, because I have thought about it, it is because of people like Youssef Mallah.”

CNN’s Sharif Paget contributed to this report.