'Screams and blood everywhere': How a Madison alumna and others helped save strangers after the Beirut explosions

Nay Hinain was one of the many Lebanese citizens packed into the city of Beirut on Aug. 4, rushing to stock up on supplies before the country went into a second lockdown after a rise in the country's COVID-19 cases. 

Hinain, who was born in Lebanon and graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2019, was picking out nail polish colors with a salon employee when 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded in the nearby Beirut port. 

Two Wednesday morning explosions flattened the port of Beirut and some surrounding city sections, killing at least 135 people, injuring over 5,000 and displacing as many as 300,000 Lebanese citizens as of Aug. 5. 

Stateside, Zainab Fleifel, a University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee student whose parents immigrated to the United States and settled in Greendale, woke up on Aug. 4 to dozens of text messages from friends.

They promised prayer and support, and asked after her family members in Lebanon, but Fleifel didn't know why.

A few moments later, Fleifel would scroll through social media to see the same scenes Hinain had witnessed with her own eyes.

Both young women would spend the next hours waiting to hear the fates of their families.

'I'm just trying to get them to a hospital'

"All I could hear were screams, just screams and blood everywhere and people throwing up and slipping on their blood," Hinain recalled the scene at the nail salon in a phone interview from Lebanon, as she drove away from her sister's house with her mother. 

Her sister, who is eight months pregnant, was injured in the blast while protecting her one-year-old daughter and unborn baby. While she shielded both with her body, a wall collapsed on top of her. 

After receiving numerous stitches for her injuries, Hinain's sister survived, and so did both her children. 

Hinain herself, miraculously, was uninjured because she was at the back of the nail salon, where there were no windows. Other customers were not so lucky, so Hinain said she acted quickly to help save them.

Minutes later, she said, strangers were bleeding out in the back seat of her car as she rushed them to the hospital. 

But hospitals, already flooded with COVID-19 patients, were treating patients in overflowing parking lots and and sidewalks. Hinain was turned away from multiple locations as medical professionals, interns and volunteers struggled to keep up with the injured and dying. 

Now that her own family is confirmed to be safe, Hinain says one stranger she rushed to the hospital still haunts her.

A young woman, studying for exams with her boyfriend in a nearby library, was being carried on foot to the nearest hospital by her father and boyfriend, and had glass protruding from her skull.

That hospital was a 30 minute drive away.

"I was like, please get in the car with me. I know you don't know me, but like we literally have no other option right now," Hinain said. "She she was literally yellow in my car. She was young, she was losing so much blood.

"I still have her bloodstains in my car." 

'This is my country'

After finding out about the explosions, Fleifel spent the next three hours on social media following the news surrounding the event and trying to get a hold of her family members in Lebanon. 

For a long time, Fleifel and her family in Greendale played a waiting game as they watched update after update of the growing number of dead in Beirut. 

"(My family here) tries to help them in any way, shape or form but at the end...

physically we can't do anything," Fleifel said. "That's the hardest part." 

Fleifel's uncle, Abbas, was working in Beirut near the explosion when part of a nearby building collapsed on him, leaving him with multiple cuts, bruising and a dislocated shoulder.

He was later treated at a hospital, though Fleifel said that doesn't give her much comfort for his care, as hospitals in Beirut continue to be overrun and lack supplies.

But distance doesn't keep any walls up between Fleifel's family and their love for Lebanon.

"Sometimes, genuinely, I feel selfish feeling bad or feeling sad because I'm not the one experiencing it," Fleifel said. "Then, I see it and I'm like 'this is my country.' This is my country being destroyed."

The situation in Lebanon and how to help 

The explosions aren't the first hardships to hit Lebanon in the last year.

On top of being affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic, Lebanon is currently in an economic crisis. Inflation, as well as a mixed use of the U.S. dollar and the Lebanese lira, contribute to the problem as at the lira drops in value. 

The country also has been in an active revolution against its government since October 2019. 

After the explosions, the country is now dealing with a rising number of fatalities, thousands of injuries and hundreds of thousands of displaced citizens in the midst of the pandemic.

Beirut is now in a two-week state of emergency and the city's security is under control of the Lebanese military. The damage to the city is estimated at around $3 billion U.S. dollars, according to Beirut's governor, Marwan Abboud.

Rescuers continue to search for survivors in the wreckage. 

Aid is pouring in from countries around the world, and some of that aid is coming right from Wisconsin. 

After seeing news of the explosions, Ali Khan, a recent UW-Madison graduate, immediately contacted Hinain, a friend who he'd met during their time together in college.

He then decided to start up a grassroots fundraiser in Madison called "Help Lebanon" in order to send money to Hinain, so she could directly distribute it to people in need. 

However, due to the economic crisis, Lebanese citizens are mostly unable to withdraw money from financial accounts, so Khan said the fundraiser is exploring "other options."

"It's really to show that Madison does care for her... and that her home here still wants to support her," Khan said. "Another goal is really to humanize the situation... and show that this violence shouldn't be normalized." 

Help Lebanon has raised over $2,500 since Aug. 4. 

Other organizations providing aid for Lebanon include:

• The Lebanese Red Cross 
• Impact Lebanon
• Save the Children's "Lebanon Children's Relief Fund"
• A growing list of urgent blood needs for explosion victims
• Social media accounts helping to identify victims or find the missing

When Hinain survived the explosions, she said many of her friends asked why she didn't run or seek shelter. 

"One of the things we learned as (psychology) students is being altruistic, and the whole bystander effect," she said. "If one person doesn't do anything, then no one will."

Samantha Hendrickson can be reached at 414-224-2865 or shendrickson@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @samanthajhendr.