“We had the economic crisis, then came COVID-19, then came the explosion, then the government putting restrictions on,” he said. “Everything is happening together so people are just in awe, what do we do, where do we start.” Dr Rahayel described the August 4 explosion – which killed 180, injured another 6,000 and left 300,000 homeless – as “phenomenal”. “It happened in the split of a second… it’s nothing someone can be prepared for, you cannot imagine how everything rumbled, how everything moved,” he said. He said the effort to rebuild would be a difficult one as the people of Lebanon did not believe their government was working hard enough for them. “We do not want our government, we do not trust our government, we do not trust our political parties,” he said. “What’s happening in 2020 is beyond, it’s unimaginable.”
