Broken glass and window frames lay on the floor of the Sursock Palace, heavily damaged after the explosion in the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020. The level of destruction from the massive explosion at Beirut's port last week is ten times worse than what 15 years of civil war did. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Broken glass and window frames lay on the floor of the Sursock Palace, heavily damaged after the explosion in the seaport of Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020. The level of destruction from the massive explosion at Beirut's port last week is ten times worse than what 15 years of civil war did. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Felipe Dana/AP

Editor’s Note: India Stoughton lived and covered the arts and culture scene in Beirut for eight years. She’s currently based in London due to the pandemic.

CNN  — 

At the moment that one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history blasted outwards from Beirut’s port and swept across the city, Zeina Arida, the director of Sursock Museum, was standing outside her office with two colleagues. The force of the explosion, less than a mile away, threw them into the museum’s stairwell, as all around them windows shattered and glass and debris rained down. “We have escaped by a miracle,” Arida said over the phone three days later. “The museum is blown aw