Beirut after the blast: the crunch of glass, acrid smoke and stairs slick with blood

THE CLOCK had just struck 6pm when the world shook. From Sassine Square, one mile (1.6km) from the blast, it seemed like a car bomb or a gas explosion—a disaster, but a localised one. Only on the drive down towards the Mediterranean did the scale of the devastation become clear. Streets were blanketed with broken glass that rained down from battered buildings. At a busy intersection three women sat in the median holding scraps of fabric to bloodied heads. Beirut was an assault on the senses: the crunch of glass under tyres, the wail of sirens, the acrid smell of smoke.The explosion at Beirut’s port on August 4th was gigantic. Residents of Cyprus felt it, 150 miles (240km) away. Seismological monitors in Jordan registered it as the equivalent of a minor earthquake. The shock wave left much of Beirut’s city centre in ruins. By the next evening the death toll was 135, a number that will surely rise as rescuers dig through the rubble. Another 5,000 people were injured. The financial cost will run into the billions, in a country that can ill afford to pay.