Beirut Search Effort Sparked by Dog Stops, No Survivor Found

A search operation of a building that collapsed during last month's deadly blast in Beirut stopped on Sunday after rescue workers said they did not find any survivors.

"There's nothing more," after an exhaustive search that lasted three days, George Abou Moussa, Lebanon's civil defense operations chief, told AFP. "There was nobody alive and there were no dead."

The head of the Chilean team, Francisco Lermanda, told journalists at the scene late Saturday they had not found any bodies amid the rubble. Lermanda said the pulsing signals heard might have come from a member of the rescue team.

In past days, the Chilean team had urged people on the streets, including journalists, to turn off their mobile phones and remain quiet for several minutes at a time to avoid interfering with their instruments.

Lermanda said they would search a sidewalk after which they would declare the operation over.

Rescue workers already said Saturday there was no longer any sign of life, dashing hopes raised by sensor readings of an apparent pulse from under a building that collapsed in last month's blast.

The cataclysmic explosion in the port of Beirut killed at least 191 people, making it Lebanon's deadliest peacetime disaster.

Seven people are still listed as missing.

On Wednesday night, a sniffer dog deployed by Chilean rescuers detected a scent under rubble in the heavily damaged Mar Mikhail neighborhood next to the port.

High-tech sensors confirmed the apparent heartbeat and rescue teams took up the search.

Two female rescue workers on Saturday slipped through a final tunnel to check for any victim in the last air pocket but found nobody.

Engineer Riad al-Asaad said the workers had cleared two layers of rubble and reached a stairway, but again they found no-one.

Lebanese officials had played down the chances of anyone surviving so long beneath the rubble.

But even the faint hope had caught the imagination of a country already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and the country's worst economic crisis in decades.

Lebanon lacks the tools and expertise to handle advanced search and rescue operations, so they have been supported by experts from Chile, France and the United States.

The area of the final search for a survivor was among the hardest hit by the blast that was so powerful it was heard in Cyprus, some 240 kilometers away.

The devastating explosion of nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate at the port of Beirut caused widespread damage to several neighborhoods. The Lebanese capital is still reeling from the blast, with a quarter of a million people made homeless by the impact of the explosion on apartment buildings.

The black-and-white 5-year-old rescue dog named Flash had inspected the building several times a day as aid workers removed debris. Photos of Flash, in red shoes to protect its paws, circulated on social media and the dog became a hero to many Lebanese.

Two days after the explosion, a French rescue team and Lebanese civil defense volunteers had searched the same building, which had a bar on the ground floor. At the time, they had no reason to believe anyone was still at the site.