In Beirut, One Moment Changed Life Forever

On the night of August 4, 2020, 32-year-old Clara Chammas was at home with her fiancé, trying out her new bed after a full day of shopping for their new home.

From the other room, her mother called to her to come look out the window at white smoke coming from the Port of Beirut. Curious, she and her fiancé took out their phones to take a picture. That’s the last thing Clara remembers.

Twenty minutes later, she woke up in the stairwell of her building — unable to remember how she got there.

“Somehow, we were barefoot. We didn’t have shoes on,” she said. “So we rushed down to the street without our shoes. I remember people offering to take me to the hospital. People were everywhere. They were helping others, giving us bottles of water. They told us we couldn’t go to the hospital right away because the hospitals were full. I was so lost. So, so lost.”

Clara had fractured her spine in three places, hit her head, and broken her nose. At the hospital, the doctors told her it was a miracle she wasn’t paralyzed.

Her fiancé showed her a video of the explosion to help explain what had happened. A warehouse containing large quantities of ammonium nitrate had exploded, decimating one-third of the city. The blast, one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions in history, killed at least 200 people, injured at least 6,000, and left an estimated 300,000 with nowhere to live.

“The video of the explosion and what happened afterward — it’s so unbelievable,” she said. “If I saw it in a movie, I would think it was fake.”

‘From bad to worse’

Months later, Lebanon’s capital city continued to reel from the devastation of the disaster. Many of the buildings that were destroyed were not reconstructed, including hospitals, clinics, and the Port of Beirut itself.

The health system has teetered on the brink of collapse, with a shortage of medication, protective equipment, and beds in hospitals and clinics across the city. Many health care workers have left Lebanon for better-paying jobs.

The people of Lebanon were already struggling with a financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic before the blast, a member of Project HOPE’s response team in Lebanon. The explosion has only made these problems worse.

“The health care system throughout Lebanon is on the verge of collapse,” Myftari said six months after the explosion. “The situation is going from bad to worse. The health care system is struggling on all fronts to provide proper support to patients. There is a shortage of beds and a shortage of oxygen, and there have been instances where patients have been examined in hospital or clinic hallways.”

How Project HOPE is responding

In the immediate aftermath of the blast, Project HOPE and local NGO René Moawad Foundation supported community clean-up efforts, distributed face masks, and provided wound and trauma care while actively sourcing and distributing medicines and medical supplies.

In the six months after the explosion, Project HOPE supported more than 70,000 survivors and health care workers in Beirut, Mount Lebanon, and North Lebanon. We supported 24 hospitals, reached 30,000 patients with medicines and disaster health kits, and supplied 20,000 health care workers with medicines, medical supplies, and protective gear.

Project HOPE’s assistance was done in close coordination with the World Health Organization, the United Nations Population Fund, local partners, and health facilities to tackle long-term health needs, like providing personal protective equipment, training new health workers, and addressing mental health needs.

> Learn more: Explosion in Beirut: How Project HOPE is Responding

As a psychologist, Clara knows it will take time for the people of Lebanon to heal — that the mental health effects brought on by the scenes she and so many others experienced will be impossible to “just erase.”

“What I saw in the hospital is something I can never forget,” she said. “I remember when the doctor was pushing my wheelchair, he was moving people with his feet. There was blood everywhere … people crying over their wives and husbands. It was horrible. I was concerned with myself, but I couldn’t not notice the people around me, in much worse conditions than me.”

With support from the AT&T Foundation and in partnership with AMEL Association International and Bourghorijan Health Center, Project HOPE expanded our initial response to improve access to free reproductive health services and psychosocial support for vulnerable and displaced mothers and children. Services include family planning consultations, support for survivors of gender-based violence, general checkups, gynecology checkups, and pregnancy checkups.

“There’s going to be a considerable amount of trauma, but since it’s Lebanon I know people are so resilient,” Clara sais. “We’re all broken somewhere. We’ve all had these experiences throughout our lives. We are all survivors, even if you didn’t get injured.”