Beirut Port Explosions
Hazzardous Material
How the score is calculated
The score starts at 8. It adds points from recorded affected, deaths, displaced and casualty counts, plus terms found in the story title, event type or status. For each count, only its highest matching band is used.
- Affected people
- 1–999: +5 · 1,000–9,999: +12 · 10,000–99,999: +20 · 100,000–999,999: +28 · 1 million+: +35
- Deaths
- 1–9: +8 · 10–99: +14 · 100–999: +22 · 1,000+: +30
- Displaced people
- 1–9,999: +6 · 10,000–99,999: +12 · 100,000+: +18
- Casualties
- 100 or more: +8
- Story wording
- +10 for terms such as catastrophe, famine, war, conflict, major earthquake, mass casualty or critical. Otherwise, +5 for active, ongoing, emergency, outbreak, cyclone or hurricane.
Score bands: Watch 0–24 · Moderate 25–49 · High 50–74 · Critical 75–100. Scores are capped at 100. Missing or unparseable figures add no points.
This is a rule-based WorldsAid triage indicator, not an official or independently validated classification. It does not account for recency or local context, and it can understate events with incomplete reporting. Check the linked sources.
Historical record
Status: CLOSED · Imported 2026-10-07
Closed for this historical import at the site owner’s request; not a new assessment of current conditions.
In brief
- What happenedOn 4 August, a warehouse at the Beirut Port exploded, causing widespread casualties and material damage.
- How many affectedAffected persons: 500,000 · Displaced persons: 500,000 · Deaths: 150
- What help is neededThe United Nations is mobilizing assistance to support the ongoing government-led emergency response. ( OCHA, 5 Aug 2020 )
What changed
First retained snapshot
No earlier verified snapshot is present in the recovered dataset. This record remains available as the historical baseline.
Situation
On 4 August, a warehouse at the Beirut Port exploded, causing widespread casualties and material damage. National and international search and rescue teams and disaster management experts have been dispatched to support ongoing emergency efforts. Initial reports indicate more than 135 people were killed, and an additional 5,000 people were injured. Scores more remain missing. Widespread structural damage was reported at the port and surrounding commercial and residential neighborhoods. Multiple health facilities sustained damages. Hospitals have been overwhelmed with casualties, with many intensive care units (ICUs) already near capacity due to COVID-19. The Government of Lebanon estimates that the explosions have left more than 300,000 people homeless in the Greater Beirut area. The United Nations is mobilizing assistance to support the ongoing government-led emergency response. ( OCHA, 5 Aug 2020 )
Linked charities and agencies
WorldsAid verification
A WorldsAid editor reviewed this record against the retained source record, cleaned feed formatting and checked the crisis, place and reporting date. 4 human-impact figures were separated from the narrative and dated where the source allowed. Earlier observations remain in the evidence history instead of being silently overwritten.
Verified figures
- Affected persons
- 500,000 retained at 2020-09-07
- Displaced persons
- 500,000 retained at 2020-09-07
- Deaths
- 150 retained at 2020-09-07
- Injured
- 5,000 retained at 2020-09-07
What we knew when
- WorldsAid record entered the retained historical dataset.
- Last verification represented by this immutable snapshot.
Earlier figures are never replaced by later values; additional observations are retained as new ledger entries.
Provenance
This page renders the last verified WorldsAid cache directly in HTML. It does not treat generated summaries as primary evidence.
Cached dataset: worldsai_drup771.sql.gz
Verified
SHA-256 eeae3217e8550b7909b01ce644da98cda85b6503c1e719509e9ea2edaff10314No external source link was stored for this record.