i'm joined now by christoph klayman he's project director for lebanon and syria with the freedom now been funded asian and he joins me from beirut you were close to the port when the explosion occurred could you briefly tell me what your experience was yes i was at my apartment just coming back from work my apartment is approximately 800 meters away from the explosion. i 1st heard a small explosion that felt a little bit like an earthquake and then a couple of minutes later as this big explosion that we all saw on television that looks like an atomic bomb explosion and i felt this wave coming at me and i just was hiding behind. my whole it was basically wrecked you could see glass everywhere all the doors were flying around the apartment i was very lucky fortunately that nothing happens and you. know because of the economy in lebanon has deteriorated rapidly over the past 6 months just how bad is it for normal lebanese. for a lot of people it has really become. a statistic that show around 50 percent of the lebanese now live below the public line and that is a dramatic indicator you