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    After Beirut Blast, Lebanese Volunteers Deliver Relief The State Fails To Provide

    "Lebanese people have to help each other in the absence of a functioning state," says Hussein Kazoun of Nation Station, a volunteer disaster relief effort operating out of an abandoned gas station.
    by Nada Homsi Aug 27, 2020 4 minutes
    The entrance to Nation Station, a disaster relief community center in Beirut that operates out of an abandoned gas station. Nation Station serves the residents of Geitawi, a neighborhood badly damaged in the Aug. 4 blast.

    It has been three weeks since a massive explosion in Beirut's port killed nearly 200 people, injured thousands and damaged much of the city's infrastructure. Explosives experts say it was one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions of all time; even Lebanon's neighboring countries felt the strength of the blast.

    Following the explosion, the ubiquitous sound of shattered glass being swept away became a discordant anthem of Beirut's grief. Thousands of volunteers from all over Lebanon and its diaspora flooded the affected areas, armed with shovels to clear rubble and wreckage blocking the streets and offering accommodation to hundreds of thousands who'd lost their homes. For the elderly and vulnerable, they fixed broken doors and windows.

    Hussein Kazoun,

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