The August 4, 2020 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon is thought to be one of the most powerful artificial, non-nuclear explosions ever, causing over 200 deaths and 7500 injuries. In today’s episode, we walk through a firsthand account of what happened during this mass casualty event from the lens of an emergency physician who was there.

Guest Bio: Sarah Abdul-Nabi, MD is an emergency medicine resident at the American University of Beirut Medical Center.  She is the author of Airway Breathing Circulation: An Emergency Medicine Resident's Experience of the Beirut Explosion.

Awake + Aware | Our 2026 Retreat

Join us at Awake and Aware, our 3-day retreat in Scottsdale, AZ. March 1-4, 2026. Space is limited.

Learn More Here

🎓 P.S. This is a CME event.

The Flameproof Course

The hidden anti-burnout curriculum we all should have learned in training. Cohort 3 begins Sept 10, 2024. Get the deets

For full show notes of this episode and all sorts of other goodies, visit our podcast website

We discuss:

• The moment of the Beirut explosion, when the ceiling started to fall in, the room started to shake, and then everything went dark [04:40];
• Sarah’s first patient, and then the deluge that arrived within 2 minutes [07:10];
• The initial chaos of managing a mass casualty with minimal light, no electricity, and a damaged ED [11:10];
• Being unable to stop chest compressions on a young woman with a brain hemorrhage, even after your attending tells you it’s futile [16:15];
• What it was like to go back to work 2 days later and why Sarah needed to take a couple weeks off to recover emotionally [21:10];
• The catharsis of debriefing, staring at nature, and journaling [23:30];
• The unbearable fear and self-doubt that were part of her recovery [29:00];
• Reflective solitude vs. isolation [31:30];
• And more.