The World Bank’s team has catalogued seven shipwrecks in Beirut (according to Insurance Marine News), following the explosion of ammonium nitrate in a warehouse in early August.
The initial damage assessment for the total impact of the explosion is between $3.8bn and $4.6bn.
The Bank also catalogued a wide range of damaged infrastructure assets. The damaged port assets include:
- A 120,000-ton grain silo, which contained 15,000 tons of grain
- 200 metres of quays
- navigation channels and berths
- the Customs and Ministry of Agriculture buildings
- warehouses with a total area of about 160,000 square meters
- cargo handling equipment
- 373 full containers
- the port’s sanitary-phytosanitary facilities
HMS Enterprise has been in Beirut to carry out survey work of the port and deliver vital stores to the city.
Enterprise has loaded stores from RAF Akrotiri, Cyprus, and taking them across the Mediterranean to Beirut, including 500 canvas cots, 112 tents and five field kitchens.
The supplies are designed to house and feed up to 500 soldiers from the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) who are working on the relief operation.
Also, on board Enterprise were three soldiers from the British Army’s Mercian Regiment, ready to help the LAF set up the tents and field kitchens, and seven members of the Royal Marines Force Protection Team from 42 Commando.
“HMS Enterprise has had a small role to play here supporting our partners in Lebanon in their efforts to rebuild and, more importantly, reopen this vital port,” says Commander Cecil Ladislaus.
“We are all proud of what we have achieved here working shoulder to shoulder with our Lebanese partners.”
One of the ship’s destroyed was once a daily visitor to Jersey.
The Abou Karim I was just metres from the epicentre of the blast, according to the Bailiwick Express.
It keeled over into a next-door ship before capsizing hours later.
In a previous life, the abandoned livestock carrier was the Commodore Clipper, sailing daily between the Channel Islands and Portsmouth between 1991 and 1996, bringing the majority of goods into Jersey.
The ship was built in 1971 and had been laid up in Beirut port since 2015.