for the past several years,
Lebanon has been in economic
freefall.
Its currency is close to
worthless.
It's government is fractured and
ineffective.
There's almost no electric power
and there's less security.
Lebanon's people are suffering.
Your special correspondent sent
us this report on a country in
collapse -- our special
correspondent sent us this
report on a country in collapse.
>> As a ranger in the country's
mountainous north, he considers
the trees the emblem of their
flag, many of them hundreds of
years old, sacred.
But this past winter, they
started to disappear.
As Lebanon's economic
catastrophe escalates, the cost
of basic goods like fuel has
gone through the roof.
The only option now for most to
cook and stay warm's firewood.
Too expensive to buy.
>> If you ask anyone here where
they are chopping trees, they
simply say they don't have need
to eat or their income only
lasts a few days.
No -- no matter how much
regulation we enforce, we cannot
stand in the way of all these
people trying to keep their
children warm.
>> We come across and then
dragging a freshly cut tree down
the mountainside with his bare
hands.
He's a soldier but cannot get by
on his army salary.
He's too afraid of punishment to
speak to us.
Felling green or living trees is
illegal and could have
disastrous environmental
consequences, but people here
are now so desperate they are
thinking about how to keep their
children fed and warm today, not
about what comes tomorrow.
>> These trees are not just mine
but for my children and for my
children's children as well as
for everyone who lives in this
village.
If the government is not willing
to support the people, we will
say goodbye to all these trees
and three or four years from
now, the only thing he will be
able to see here is rocks.
>> In the nearest village, we
meet a pair of loggers who say
they work legally, but they are
not surprised others are
resorting to stealing Lebanon's
natural bounty.
>> May god replace this failing
government.
We pay our electricity bills,
but there's no power.
We are paying taxes for
something that does not exist.
>> Fuel is not the only
essential that Lebanon can no
longer provide for its people.
The economy here has collapsed,
sending the currency value
crashing from 1500 per dollar to
30,000.
For those stuck here, this is no
longer a crisis situation.
This is a new reality.
They are now facing a future in
which the most basic necessities
are luxuries.
>> In may for the first time
since the crisis began, Lebanon
held an election, a chance for
change at last, or is it?
Many were apathetic, more
focused on survival than a
government they feel lives in
another world.
>> We Lebanese have had enough.
>> Absent a functioning state,
as so often here, it is the
Lebanese people who are helping
their own.
Down the mountain at 11:00 A.M.,
families wait patiently at the
Gates of this food bank in the
northern city of Tripoli.
Robert has helped needy families
here for years.
This city as Lebanon's poorest,
but in the past few months,
their numbers have ballooned so
fast the kitchen is struggling
to cope.
The need has gone from 40 meals
a day to 600.
>> Those three things, 900,000
you always.
-- 900,000 diwals.
>> Is the government doing
anything for people here at all?
>> No, no.
>> Families who use to donate to
the kitchen now come here to use
it.
They have had to drastically
reduce what they can offer.
>> Food and sweet and bread.
We used to sell two kinds of
food, but the more we have
people, the less we can serve.
>> Many of these people are
getting one meal a day?
>> Yes.
>> He walks five miles back and
forth each day from his home to
the kitchen.
This small bag will have to last
his family of five a week.
He's grateful for whatever they
can give.
Without it, his family would
>> As soon as I get this stuff
home, the kids rummage through,
they eat it.
They open the hummus and the
beans.
The cheese lasts one day.
The situation is becoming
unbearable.
I cannot buy new.
It costs a fortune.
So does fruit.
>> Back home, his three small
children and wife wait in the
dark.
With just one hour of power a
day when it comes and no money
for a pricey generator, they
live in the shadowy damp of
their crumbling three-room flat.
Much of the furniture has been
sacrificed for firewood.
>> The wardrobe had two shelves
which I broke off to use as
firewood.
What am I supposed to do?
I had to waive the kids.
>> She follows her father
around.
Her feet are like ice on the
frozen floor.
He cannot afford shoes for any
of his kids.
There has not been any water in
the taps for four days.
With no work and no state
assistance, food is whatever the
kitchen gives them, but no gas
to cook it, food in those meals
are a gamble.
>> They are deprived of so much.
I don't care about myself.
I would eat out of trash, but
they don't know any better.
I'm constantly in pain, but I
don't like to talk about it.
I constantly feel defeated and
miserable.
God forbid what's lying in the
future.
>> Robert checks the dwindling
supplies at head of another meal
session.
These days, the kitchen is just
taking things day by day.
>> When they do not get enough,
they have to close for weeks at
a time.
The united nations estimated
nearly half of Lebanese were
food insecure, meaning they
don't have enough to eat to stay
healthy, and that number only
looks set to grow.
Salaries are not going up.
The economy is still going down,
and for people here, nothing is
changing.
Can people survive here just on
charity forever?
Donations are reducing.
>> Even the donation will not be
enough for all the people to
survive.
>>'S team opens the Gates, ready
to do what they can for their
community, knowing the day
approaches when they will have
nothing left to give.