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On Thursday, rescue teams resumed their search for possible missing persons under the rubble of a building destroyed by the Beirut explosion, after a specialized Chilean team detected signs of at least one body and monitored a heartbeat, according to the governor. from Beirut, Marwan Abboud.
Despite the passage of a month after the explosion in the port of Beirut, and the logical impossibility of finding survivors, the news spread quickly in Lebanon and on social media, reviving hope. Official estimates indicate that seven people remain missing since the tragedy.
During his inspection of search work on Mar Mikhael Street in Beirut, Abboud told reporters that a rescue squad had recently arrived from Chile and one of his trained dogs inferred an odor.
After the team inspected the building whose upper floors collapsed, via a specialized thermal scanning device, it became clear, according to Abboud, that “there appear to be one or two corpses … and there may be living ones.” . “.
“We hope someone makes it out alive,” he added.
According to residents of the neighborhood, the building, which had a bar on its ground floor, turned into piles of rubble, making searches “sensitive and precise,” according to Abboud.
Lebanon has neither the equipment nor the technical capacity for disaster management. Several countries rushed to dispatch aid and technical assistance teams after the explosion, which killed at least 190 people and injured more than 6,500.
The governor clarified during his inspection of the work flow, that “there is no list of those who disappeared as a result of the explosion, and it cannot be said that the records have ended, since people have not reported the missing, so the state, army or municipality cannot know who is missing. ” Lebanon was not prepared for such a disaster.
He pointed out that “the rescue teams always arrived in the area in the context of searching for missing persons, but we did not have dogs, thermal machines, or other equipment and capabilities that the Chilean rescue team possesses,” noting that “the dog trained with the Chilean team indicated the presence of a person “. Underneath the rubble, and then the ‘scanner’ showed there was a dead body or two, and there was a chance someone was still alive. “
Abboud emphasized that “the work in this place is very delicate and sensitive, and there is also a danger to the lives of the inspectors,” adding that “the civil defense teams, the Chilean team and the Beirut firefighters continue to work on the search for missing persons “.
“We are now working to raise the fill to reach the two people with a depth of about two meters,” said 1st Lt. Michel Murr of the Beirut Fire Brigade, explaining: “We try as much as possible to find out if there are neighborhoods. “
A Lebanese rescuer involved in the debris removal told local LBC channel that the scanning device was taking “19 breaths per minute”, indicating that there are possibilities other than life, but confirmed that “the dog is trained to discover the smell of humans only. ” .
The Lebanese reacted with great emotion to the possible presence of neighborhoods. One of the Twitter users wrote: “There is a beating heart, Beirut.” And post an EKG.
Another tweet read: “More than six million heartbeats at the same time require a person to hit under the rubble.”
