The 10 firefighters who received the call shortly before 6 p.m. - about a big fire at the nearby port of Beirut - could not know what awaited them.
The brigade of nine men and one woman could not know about the stockpile of ammonium nitrate warehoused since 2013 along a busy motorway, in the heart of a densely populated residential area - a danger that had only grown with every passing year.
The firefighters piled into a fire engine and an ambulance and raced to the scene - and to their doom. The Port of Beirut is considered one of the most corrupt institutions in a country where nearly every public institution is riddled with corruption. Port officials are notorious for taking bribes. A bribe from an importer, for example, will ensure an incoming shipment is mislabeled to get lower customs duties - or escapes duties and taxes completely. Confiscated goods are sometimes sold off on the sly for a profit.
It is not known if Skaff ever received a response or if he sent other letters. He was found dead outside his house near Beirut under mysterious circumstances, shortly after he retired in March 2017. At least one medical report suggested he might have been murdered. It is not clear if there was ever a reply. Ministry officials did not respond to requests from The Associated Press asking for comment.
On Oct. 26, 2015, the army command asked customs to sample the material and check the level of nitrogen “and based on that we can give a suggestion regarding them.” An administrator at Lebanese Explosives told the AP that it was “not interested in buying confiscated material because we did not know where they were brought from, what is the quality nor its expiry.”
The report to President Michel Aoun and then-Prime Minister Hassan Diab warned that thieves could steal the material to make explosives. Or, it said, the mass of material could cause an explosion “that would practically destroy the port.” Kobaissi shared the report with the AP. “The same memo was sent roughly every year basically since that ship arrived, and it became clear the stuff wasn't moving. So, it was like a tradition and it wasn't marked as priority,” the official told AP, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the media.
Both the customs chief Daher and the head of the port, Hassan Koraytem, are among those detained in the wake of the explosion. “When they called us, they said they are hearing the sound of fireworks,” Beirut fire chief Nabil Khankarli told the AP. Twelve seconds later, at 6:08 p.m., the ammonium nitrate detonated in one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever recorded.
“There were lots of flashes going off inside the smoke,” he said. He heard some kind of eruption, like a volcano. “Something that was boiling very much,” he said.
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