It was a sultry Tuesday evening when half the city blew up. A fire in warehouse twelve of the port of Beirut caused 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate to explode in a gigantic detonation, the force of which could still be felt in Cyprus and Jordan.
more on the subject
Icon: Spiegel PlusAudiostory: In the ruins of a cityBy Christoph Reuter, Thore Schröder and Lorenzo Tugnoli (photos)
Icon: Spiegel Plus Catastrophe in Lebanon: How the deadly chemicals came to BeirutBy Ian Urbina
Resignation of the government: How things are going on in LebanonBy Raniah Salloum
The shock wave raged through Lebanon's capital in a second, bursting hundreds of thousands of windows, tearing doors and furniture, turning shards of glass into projectiles. More than 200 people died, and more bodies have been found almost every day since then. More than 6,000 were injured and the homes of 300,000 people were vandalized.
But the numbers remain pale. They are too big, remain unimaginable. They don't tell you what it means when existence is destroyed in one fell swoop. When the banal question of where someone is standing now makes the difference between life and death.
The fate of the individuals makes it easier to feel what happened: How oppressive it is to be lucky to have survived next to a dead friend. How the Lebanese state let this catastrophe happen through unbelievable ignorance and now lets the victims down again. Or what happened to the refugees and guest workers who lived like slaves.
Beirutians fight against being mere victims in very different ways: the 85-year-old lady with nonchalance and cigarettes, the head of the national bar association with an unusual declaration of revolution. Beirut is full of great stories of small fates. We tell six of them.