PRINCE GEORGE — “I don’t remember feeling this sad.”
The words of Alia Hamieh, a Lebanese immigrant living with her family in Prince George in reaction to last week’s deadly bomb blast in Beirut.
She says the country was already reeling economically due to the pandemic, and says the explosion has only made matters worse.
Hamieh, a math professor at UNBC and her husband Khalil Al Arab, an engineer, moved to Prince George a couple of years ago with their daughter and say their entire families are all back home in Lebanon but luckily were not injured.
When Hamieh first heard about the blast, her thoughts immediately went to her best friend who works in Beirut.
“I had just woken up and I read there was an explosion and the first thought I had was my best friend who works at the port. So I called her right away and she said she was okay. That she had left work at 4 p.m. and the explosion happened at 6 p.m.”
The family encourages anyone who can help the roughly 300,000 people left homeless by the blast to donate to the Red Cross or the Humanitarian Coalition.
“I’d like to reach out to everybody who can help. A lot of people think that the price of a cup of coffee would not help but if you know exactly what’s happening in Lebanon, you do know it actually helps,” says Al Arab.
“People have lost their life savings just before COVID and then COVID came and now this explosion. People have houses that they can’t even fix. So yeah, we’d like to reach out to everybody to give whatever they can. And if you donate to the Humanitarian Coalition, the government of Canada will match it up to $5 million and we’d appreciate it.”
As of Aug. 11, the blast had killed at least 160 people and injured thousands more. It’s also left approximately 300,000 people homeless.
