Lebanese Kitchen owner reacts to Beirut explosion

During a busy lunch rush at Lebanese Kitchen, owner Najib Jomha is usually making his rounds to customers, thanking them for business while catching up on missed time.

On Wednesday, Jomha’s lunch hour was filled with trips to his cellphone in the back of the restaurant.

It’s where he gets all of his news updates after watching streets he used to walk as a teenager reduced to rubble after a massive explosion rocked the Lebanese capital Tuesday.

“It is astonishing,” Jomha said. “Even more astonishing, it is very sad. This is something that could be avoided.”

Johma attended university and lived in Beirut for roughly ten years prior to immigrating to Canada in 1974. Since Tuesday’s explosion, he’s been glued to the news for the latest updates in the city he calls “the Paris of the Middle East.”

“This is just like an atomic bomb,” Jomha said while watching videos of the aftermath. “I get sick from the bottom of my heart. This is ridiculous.”

Jomha is speculative of how such a disaster could occur, especially with his impressions of corrupt governments rotating into power.

He said all of his family and friends are safe and accounted for, but many others in the area are distraught and trying to pick up the pieces after a section of the city was destroyed, with the blast reportedly felt roughly 250 kilometres away in Cyprus.

“(The blast) even reached the airport,” Johma said. “They don’t know the number of people who are dead from this explosion.”

“It’s just like starting from brand new.”

Jomha hopes the United Nations intervenes in the situation and conducts a full investigation to understand how the explosion happened and who is behind it.

“This is a collective death,” he said.

Any stories Jomha’s heard from loved ones back home are all rescue efforts as people use every hour of daylight to search for possible survivors with electricity out in most of the city.

“They go into the buildings to find the people. There were people that were blown 100 metres from the strength of the explosion,” he said.

“They relate it to Hiroshima.”