Beirut On Fire

I was studying like a normal university student when I feel like it is time I check Facebook. I open ad the first post that shows up is by Samer Karam who posted this an image of a big black smoke screen coming from Beirut. I will let the image speak for now and update this section as soon as I have more information

Image by Samer N.

Image by Samer Karam

[UPADTE 1] It seems to be a warehouse full of tire burning down


[UPDATE2] Now that thick smog over Beirut has faded into the invisibility of night, I turned to the evening news for some answers. Unfortunately they were few and far between as most stations buried the inferno story deep into their newscasts, if they even covered it at all.

Despite plenty of teasers of smoldering fire footage above, the actual report only lasted about 20 seconds. It was just a "read" i.e. no reporter was on the scene and the anchor provided some vague commentary with no indication of who, what, why, etc.

To be fair it was a busy news day with an explosion in Damascus and a reported arms shipment confiscated at the port of Beirut. But none of these stories took up that much time either. So where did the newscast go? To the ruling regime of course!


[UPDATE3] It has been confirmed to be a warehouse full of tires (since 1993 and still stocking until now) that was burning down yesterday afternoon in the Burj Hammoud district. The causes and the responsible of this ecological disaster seems to be until now unknown. Luckily there has been no collateral damage knowing that in Burj Hammoud there are a lot of fuel tanks. 

[UPDATE4] It seems that this fire was caused willingly to extract metal and sell it (Source: L'Orient Le Jour, Greenpeace)