2023-09-15 06:13:23
On Sunday the flood began in Libya. Then came the floods and total devastation. As of this Thursday, authorities reported at least 6,872 deaths and more than 10,000 missing. International aid organizations believe that the death toll will multiply when the final balance is made, since there are numerous towns that are cut off.
In recent days, the sea has begun to wash up the bodies of people who were swept away by the current, in shocking images that describe very well the magnitude of the tragedy.
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The most affected is the city of Derna, which is burying thousands of people in mass graves, while rescue teams search the ruins for survivors or the dead. Until before Sunday, this city had about 100,000 inhabitants.
Aerial view of the city of Derna, Libya, on Tuesday. (Jamal Alkomaty/Associated Press).The area of tragedy in Libya. (AFP).
Satellite images show buildings in Derna destroyed by water and sand. While on the ground, cars are seen dragged until they are on the mountains of rubble.
Carts piled on breakwaters and the rubble of a building destroyed by flash floods in Derna, eastern Libya. (Photo by Abdullah DOMA / AFP).
Morgues in Derna are overcrowded and bodies have been left on sidewalks, Osama Aly, spokesman for Libya’s Emergency and Ambulance Service, told CNN on Tuesday.
But what factors came together to cause this tragedy of great dimensions? In this note we explain it to you:
The storm Daniel
Before the Libya tragedy, Storm Daniel hit Greece. In that European country, it rained in 24 hours the equivalent of 18 months of precipitation, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). There were at least 16 deaths and enormous damage to infrastructure from the floods, but nothing compared to what would come next in the African nation.
Daniel then moved towards Libya, where the storm developed the characteristics of a hurricane, a hybrid phenomenon with some characteristics of a tropical cyclone and others of a mid-latitude storm, a Mediterranean tropical cyclone, he explains. BBC Mundo.
An area damaged by a flash flood in Derna on September 14, 2023. (Photo by Abdullah DOMA / AFP).
According to the AP agency, as Storm Daniel hit the coast of Derna on Sunday night, residents said they heard explosions as dikes outside the city collapsed. A torrent that invaded Wadi Derna, a valley that runs through the city, destroyed buildings and swept people into the sea.
The hot Libyan sea as a result of the climatic phenomena that hit the planet intensified Storm Daniel.
“There is consistent evidence that the frequency of Mediterranean tropical cyclones decreases with climate warming, but the most powerful ones become even stronger,” Suzanne Gray, from the department of meteorology at the British University of Reading, told Archyde.com. .
This image taken from AFPTV footage shows an aerial view of the damage caused by flooding afterward in Derna, eastern Libya. (Photo by AFPTV/AFP).
“Although the role of climate change in the intensification of Storm Daniel has not yet been formally attributed, it can be stated that the surface temperatures of the Mediterranean Sea have been considerably above average throughout the summer,” he told Science Media. Center Karsten Haustein, climatologist and meteorologist at the University of Leipzig, in Germany.
A 2022 United Nations report noted that Libya is especially vulnerable to climate change and the increasingly intense storms brought on by a warmer climate. Warming causes Mediterranean waters to expand and sea levels to rise, eroding coastlines and contributing to flooding, and low-lying coastal areas of the country are at particular risk.
Then, when Daniel unleashed his force, the rains were torrential. Between 08:00 on Sunday and 08:00 on Monday, the Omar Al Mujtar University of Al Baida recorded 414 mm of rainfall, a record for Libya, BBC Mundo reported.
Still from a video provided by the Libyan Al-Hadath television channel about flooding and destroyed roads in Al-Mukhaili on Monday. (Libya Al-Hadath, via Archyde.com).
The dams
The flooding was aggravated by the collapse of two dams, sending water rushing toward Derna, authorities reported Tuesday. In addition, four bridges over the Derna River also collapsed.
First, a dam of about 12 kilometers collapsed, according to structural engineer Andrew Barr from the University of Sheffield, cited by BBC Mundo.
Then, all the stored water rushed down the rocky river valley into the second dam, much closer to the city of Derna, collapsing it and causing the city to flood.
Ahmed Mismari, spokesman for the Libyan National Army, which controls the east of the country, said water from the dams swept “entire neighborhoods with their residents into the sea.”
For his part, Hisham Chkiouat, from the eastern Libyan government, acknowledged to the BBC’s Newshour radio program that one of the dams that burst had not received maintenance for some time.
On Tuesday, a local official told reporters that another dam in the eastern region was full of water and on the verge of collapse. The Jaza Dam, located between Derna and Benghazi, needed maintenance to avoid another disaster.
A man sits next to a vehicle destroyed by floods in Derna, eastern Libya. (AFP).
A failed state
Libya is a nation divided by war since Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed in 2011 and was unprepared to face a devastating storm. The African nation is what is often considered a failed state.
The country is administered by two rival governments. One is internationally recognized and has its headquarters in Tripoli, it is the Government of National Unity (GNU). The other administers the east of the country, including Derna. This second administration is headed by the Libyan National Army and its commander is Khalifa Hifter, leader of the militias.
With this political chaos, rescue and aid efforts become more complicated. There is also no articulated disaster prevention plan.
Now countries have to decide whether to send aid to the capital, Tripoli, or to the rival administration.
So far, most countries have sent their aid to Benghazi, the nearest major city to Derna, and its surrounding towns. Algeria, however, sent its aid to the UN-recognized government in Tripoli, about 1,000 kilometers away from the site of the tragedy.
“In the last 10 years, Libya has gone from one war to another, from one political crisis to another,” he told the New York Times Claudia Gazzini, senior analyst for Libya at the International Crisis Group. “Essentially, this has meant that, over the last decade, there hasn’t really been much investment in the country’s infrastructure,” she added.
Dr. Hani Shennib, a resident of the United States, went further and told BBC Mundo that much of the Derna tragedy is due to human negligence and dates back to the 42 years of Gaddafi’s government.
“Derna is a city that has constantly challenged Gaddafi, so he punished him very severely. The city progressively eroded: there were no schools and the hospitals were in very poor condition,” Shennib said.
Before Storm Daniel, Derna did not have “a single functioning hospital,” he continued.
A U.N. official said Thursday that most of the deaths were preventable.
“A normally functioning meteorological service would have been able to issue the warnings,” the head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Petteri Taalas, told reporters in Geneva. “Emergency management authorities would have been able to carry out the evacuation.”
The WMO stated that the National Meteorological Center had issued warnings 72 hours before the flood, notifying government authorities by email and through the media. It was unclear what action was taken in response to those warnings.
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