albawaba.com
If you thought the idea of giant piles of trash lining the streets of Beirut was pretty gross, imagine if those piles became mobile, soggy waste with a questionable-looking surface shine. Sound fun? Yeah, we didn’t think so either.
That’s the scene in Lebanon’s capital city right now, as an early winter storm of rain and hail reaked havoc across the Levant on Sunday.
Palestinian social media users shared videos of baseball-sized hail hitting cities in the West Bank, while Israeli media reported several were injured and one killed after accidents around Tel Aviv.
So Beirut isn’t the only one that’s knee-deep in the first stages of MENA’s winter months, but it’s probably the stinkiest. Lebanon’s trash saga began in July, when maintenance workers went on strike over the government’s failure to replace the dramatically-overfilled Naameh landfill. What ensued was the steady build-up of towers of plastic, food and metal waste all over Beirut.
Back then, Voice of America described them as "rancid mountains of garbage." With Sunday storm, they’re probably more like rancid rivers of garbage.
Social media users have been sharing examples across Facebook and Twitter. Have a look at some of them below.
Scenes come three months into a crisis precipitated by closure of Lebanon’s largest landfill in July
Streets in parts of Lebanon turned into rivers of garbage on Sunday as heavy rains washed through mountains of trash that have piled up during a months-long waste collection crisis.
Residents and activists posted photographs and video online showing water from torrential showers carrying accumulated waste down streets in the early morning outside Beirut and beyond.
On the edge of the capital, activists from the "You Stink" campaign, which has protested the government’s failure to solve the crisis, collected and sorted garbage that was washed into the Beirut river.
And elsewhere, residents and municipal workers used bulldozers to push dispersed trash back into piles after the rains stopped.
The scenes come three months into a crisis precipitated by the closure of Lebanon’s largest landfill in July, and the government’s failure to find an alternative.
Joseph Eid (AFP)"Lebanese workers unload a vehicle at a temporary garbage dump near the Sadd al-Bawshriyeh highway on the outskirts of Beirut, on September 4, 2015"The crisis sparked a protest movement led by the "You Stink" activist group, which brought thousands of people into the streets for several weeks of demonstrations.
The cabinet in early September approved a plan that involved finding new sites for landfills and temporarily reopening the closed Naameh site for the immediate disposal of already-accumulated waste.
But the plan has run into a series of obstacles, including the refusal of residents around Naameh to allow its reopening and protests by people living near prospective new landfill sites.
Activists and several ministers have long warned that the arrival of winter, which often brings heavy rains to Lebanon, risked dispersing months worth of trash that has accumulated in open dumps.
"You Stink" activists wearing protective suits and facemasks sorted trash that had washed into the Beirut river from piles where it has been dumped along its banks on Sunday.
"We are proud to be ‘waste workers’ in this country, for trash, corruption, and the corrupt," the group wrote on its Facebook page.
It accused Lebanon’s politicians of doing nothing "while the country drowns in their trash as a result of rampant, criminal corruption and inaction."
5 dead as heavy rains pound Egypt’s Alexandria
Meanwhile in Egypt, torrential rains lashed the country’s Mediterranean city of Alexandria Sunday, killing five people, including two children and the captain of a ship who was trapped in his car by floodwaters, officials said.
A man and two children were electrocuted to death when a cable from a tramway fell into a street flooded with water, the health ministry said in a statement.
And the captain of a ship drowned as he was unable to get out of his car which filled with floodwaters.
A 25-year-old man was also electrocuted after he fell into a pit full of electric cables.
An AFP photographer said the downpour began in the early morning and quickly flooded several streets in Egypt’s second city as well as the corniche.
Temperatures dropped sharply on Sunday across several governorates in Egypt, including Cairo, bringing also heavy rains and strong winds.
(AFP)
