Beirut was ‘lucky’, says German firm clearing blast-hit port

After a blast of historic proportions at Beirut’s port last year, Lebanon only escaped a second chemical inferno by chance, the German company clearing the dockside has said.

Michael Wentler, a chemical expert managing Combi Lift’s Beirut operation, said thousands of litres of dangerous substances stored in decaying containers for more than a decade at the port had turned the area into a minefield of chemical hazards.

“We found substances that, if mixed together, would lead to an explosion,” he told AFP on Wednesday, recounting an assignment he said compared to no other.

“The port is lucky, because the containers have a distance” between them, Wentler added.

There were a series of subsequent blazes in the port since the August 4 explosion, that killed more than 200 people and devastated swathes of Beirut.

Heavy lift transport company Combi Lift in November signed a contract with Lebanese authorities to deal with the hazardous substances at the blast site.

This month, Wentler and his team finished treating 52 containers, in a process he said revealed the lethal chaos that has long prevailed at Beirut harbour.

“I have never seen a situation like this before in my life,” Wentler said, describing festering chemical mixtures so corrosive they burned gaping holes right through massive shipping containers.

“You have like a sea or a river of yellow and green substances that came out” of some containers, he added. “These chemicals were bubbling”.

The containers — which have been at the port for more than 10 years — were stored haphazardly in seven different locations. Most were located in an open-air cargo zone at the opposite end of the blast site.

Interim port chief Bassem al-Kaisi said in November that Beirut could have been “wiped out” if the substances caught fire…..read more

 

Source: France24

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