It seems that the witness to the crime of August 4 began to fall apart, as the northern part of the wheat silos fell today (Sunday), causing a storm of dust in the place.
The Minister of Works and Transport, Ali Hamiyah, confirmed that the silos from the southern side have been separated from the rest of the building, and the movement of the Beirut port will not be affected.
As for the Minister of the Environment, Nasser Yassin, who informed the Prime Minister-designate last Wednesday that the monitoring and sensor devices in the silos detected changes in the bending speed from 2 millimeters per day to 2.5 millimeters per hour for the northern group of silos, which are in danger of falling, he commented after the fall of the part referred to as “The falling parts of the wheat silos should have been demolished,” considering that the fear for the citizens is only from the scattered dust, stressing that the southern silos are still standing without monitoring any movements that threaten their safety.
The head of the Public Relations Division in the Beirut Fire Brigade confirmed that 3 silos fell in the wastelands of the port, pointing out that each part of the silo that fell was about 64 meters long, and that the parts fell on its land and there was no danger to anyone, expecting additional silos to fall.
And the Lebanese authorities had warned, on Wednesday, that the cracked northern part of the grain silos in the Beirut port was at “risk of falling,” about two weeks after the fire broke out in it.
The warning comes two weeks after a fire broke out in the northern part of the silos, which, according to authorities and experts, resulted from the fermentation of grain stocks with high temperatures and humidity. An attempt to put out the fire by spraying water in the previous days increased the moisture of the grains, as caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati instructed the relevant agencies at the time to “prevent any workers or members of the civil defense and fire brigade from approaching them in order to preserve their safety.” He also asked the army and the Disaster Management Authority to be prepared in case parts of the building collapsed.
Some silos contain about 3,000 tons of wheat and grain, which could not be unloaded due to the danger of working near them, for fear that this would accelerate “the movement of the already cracked structure of the silos and the collapse of large parts of them,” according to the authorities.
In the first political comment on the fall of the silos, the head of the Progressive Socialist Party, former minister Walid Jumblatt, tweeted on his Twitter account, saying: "Whatever happens, the port crime will not pass."
Rawiya Hashmi (Beirut) @HechmiRawiya