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BEIRUT: Rescuers continued to search for survivors in Beirut on Saturday (September 5) even as hopes raised by the readings of a pulse sensor under the rubble from last month’s explosion began to fade.
The cataclysmic August 4 explosion in the port of Beirut killed at least 191 people, making it the deadliest peace disaster in Lebanon. A month later, seven people are still listed as missing.
READ: Signs of life detected under rubble one month after Beirut explosion, rescuer says
On Wednesday night, a sniffer dog deployed by Chilean rescuers detected an odor under a collapsed building in the heavily damaged neighborhood of Gemmayzeh, adjacent to the port.
High-tech sensors confirmed an apparent heartbeat, and a month after the August 4 explosion, rescue teams began the search.
But despite removing mounds of masonry, they have yet to find the source of the sensor reading.
A Chilean rescuer strokes a sniffer dog while others dig through the rubble of a badly damaged building in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon AFP / JOSEPH EID
“Search operations have been under way since the day before yesterday, but the chances are very low,” the director of operations for the civil defense agency, George Abou Moussa, told AFP.
“So far, we haven’t found anything.”
READ: Beirut, hit by the explosion, begins a timid recovery
Saturday was the search crews’ third day of digging in a row, largely by hand.
“We will not leave the site until we have finished going through the rubble, even if it threatens the collapse of a new building,” said civil defense official Qassem Khater.
Chilean specialist Walter Muñoz put the chances of finding a survivor at “2 percent.”
Lebanese officials had downplayed the chances of someone surviving this long under the rubble.
But even the dim hope for a miracle captured the imagination of a country already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.
“I didn’t know that I needed a miracle so badly. Please God give Beirut this miracle it deserves,” said Selim Mourad, a 32-year-old filmmaker.
Lebanon lacks the tools and experience to handle advanced search and rescue operations, so it has received the support of experts from Chile, France and the United States.
Chileans, in particular, have been praised as heroes by many Lebanese on social media, who have compared their experience to the mediocre performance of what they see as an absent state.
The country observed a minute of silence for the dead on Friday.
