Forging steel from ash

Toufic Dalal had spent 20 years building his firm into one of the largest steel manufacturers in the region, specializing in pre-engineered buildings and pre-fabricated houses. He had become a rare success story in Lebanon’s heavy industry sector. Then on 23 July, 2006, Israeli fighter jets left his factory a smoldering wreck of ash and twisted metal.      When Dalal heard his steel works factory in the Bekaa had been bombed he rushed straight to the site. Where he had stood the day before in a 22,000 square meter (sqm) factory full of heavy industrial equipment he found nothing but ruin.  While most people would have been enraged, panic stricken or crushed, Dalal said without a hint of false modesty, “It bothered me some.” “On the ground in the factory we had eight holes, 30 meters in diameter by 15 meters deep,” he said, calmly recounting the first scenes he saw.