Which is straight after this programme. hello, i m kim chakanetsa and today, i m in beirut, the capital of lebanon. on august 4, 2020, a devastating explosion ripped through the city s port. the blast claimed more than 200 lives and thousands others were injured. damage to surrounding properties and businesses was estimated to be over us$4 billion. many of those affected were small to medium enterprises led by women. it was one of the largest non nuclear explosions in history.
So, this is kind of a virtue. but on a personal level, it has taught me a lot. yeah. let s come back to 2020, the year of the pandemic. lebanon s facing this very severe financial crisis and then, of course, on august 4, the blast happens. joelle, where were you when the explosion occurred and were you injured? thank god, no. i was not injured. but i was so scared after the blast, so i couldn t really understand what happened, so i was in my car when it happened, ground zero, i did not actually hear anything, other than my car moving forward. and then, everything was yellowish. and there was glass everywhere. so, my car, i had a very big car, so i thought the explosion was next to my car and nothing around. and everything around me was ok, you know? but then, ijust realised that everything was broken and i looked up and my carwas.
We ll have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. hello, i m kim chakanetsa and today, i m in beirut, the capital of lebanon. on august 4, 2020, a devastating explosion ripped through the city s port. the blast claimed more than 200 lives and thousands others were injured. damage to surrounding properties and businesses was estimated to be over us$4 billion. many of those affected were small to medium enterprises led by women. it was one of the largest non nuclear explosions in history.
Rise again after the explosion. nour, when you look back, what were some of the hurdles you faced at the beginning? well, i started my entrepreneurialjourney a couple of weeks before the revolution started. so, it has been a chain of challenges because after that, a few weeks later, we had the banking crisis, and the lira devaluation. later on, we had the covid crisis, up until later in the summer, the beirut blast. i was feeling very scared and i wanted to give up so many times because i didn t really know what was going on and things were going. were drifting from the way we had planned them. but with the determination and the experience of my partner and the fact that we encouraged each other, we were able to keep going.
There s still lebanon somewhere, there are still people living in this country, it s not like broken souls. there s a lot of love. nour, you were at home with husband when the blast occurred. what do you remember of that day? i remember it being a very regular day, except that it was. we had been in contact with someone who had covid at the time and so, my family and i, everyone, was on lockdown to make sure that we don t infect anybody. and we were supposed to have a class at the studio around 6pm, so right around the time of the explosion. but we decided to close and to postpone because it was the ethical thing to do. and we were really saved by a miracle back then. i m really glad. but how i felt in my body, actually, just like joelle said, everyone felt like it was happening on their street and in the building where they were.