2023-09-14 01:36:14
With thousands of dead and missing, Libya paid a heavy price for Storm Daniel which struck the east of the country during the night from Sunday to Monday, particularly devastating the town of Derna. Multiple reasons explain this deadly toll.
Flattened homes, cars buried under ocher mud, devastated streets… the list material damage seems endless. The human toll from Storm Daniel, which hit Libya during the night from Sunday to Monday, September 11, is even heavier. The floods caused by the typhoon left more than 3,200 dead, around 7,000 injured and more than 2,400 missing in the locality of Derna alone, in the east of the country, according to an official report that was still provisional on Wednesday evening.
An official from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) reports an “enormous” number of deaths which could number in the thousands, with 10,000 missing. If the town of Derna is so badly affected, it is because the two dams on Wadi Derna, which retain the waters of the wadi which crosses the town of Derna, failed under the force of the floods. Powerful torrents destroyed bridges and swept away entire neighborhoods with their inhabitants on both sides of the wadi, before flowing into the Mediterranean.
How can we explain such a devastating human toll? Several factors are involved.
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A dense demographic pool
The floods which led to the destruction of two dams occurred in a particularly dense demographic area. First affecting the metropolis of Benghazi, the storm then hit the eastern coast of Libya towards the towns of Jabal al-Akhdar (north-east), such as Shahat (Cyrene), al-Marj, al-Bayda and Soussa (Apollonia) but especially Derna, the most affected town. Around 100,000 people lived in this coastal city.
Paradoxically, “the two dams on Wadi Derna had been built precisely to protect the city from flooding,” explains Shirli Sitbon, Science columnist on France 24. After the work carried out a few years ago by the Libyan state, the inhabitants still came More and more people settled there over the years because they felt safe there.”
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Defective dams, obsolete infrastructure
However, the two hydraulic constructions, which entered service in 1986, were in poor condition, according to experts. The two Wadi Derna dams were originally built between 1973 and 1977 by the Yugoslav (now Serbian) construction company Hidrotehnika-Hidroenergetika as part of an infrastructure network intended to irrigate surrounding fields while supplying Derna and neighboring communities with water.
A document published in November 2022 by Abdelwanees A. R Ashoor, hydrologist at Omar al-Mukhtar University, already warned of the risks, citing a number of floods that had hit the region several times. “The results obtained demonstrate that the area studied is at risk of flooding,” concluded the expert. “This is why immediate measures must be taken for the routine maintenance of the dams, because in the event of a big flood, the consequences will be disastrous for the inhabitants of the valley and the city.”
The deputy mayor of Derna, Ahmed Madroud, further told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that “the dams had not been properly maintained since 2002.” “The failure of the two dams amplified the already torrential floods,” continues Shirli Sitbon.
Tons of sludge have spilled into neighborhoods with dilapidated infrastructure and construction carried out in disregard of town planning rules over the last decade. “The affected areas are working-class neighborhoods where people lived in precarious housing”, recalls on France 24 Olivier Routeau, director of operations of the NGO “Première Urgence Internationale”.
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A weather phenomenon of rare violence linked to global warming
The power of the storm is mainly linked to the particularly high water temperature in the Mediterranean. “Near the Libyan coast, the sea temperature is three to four degrees higher than normal,” indicates climatologist Davide Faranda, in an article in Le Monde. However, the warmer the air evaporating from the sea, the more violent the storms, caused by the meeting between two air masses at different temperatures. High water temperatures actually encourage water evaporation, which then increases the rainfall potential of depressions, disturbances and other storms.
Added to the warming of the waters are “the intense heat which has dried out the soil, preventing any flow of water”, specifies Shirli Sitbon.
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A state of emergency ignored by residents
Before reaching the Libyan coast, Storm Daniel first hit Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey last week, killing 27 people and leaving, there too, landscapes devastated by torrential waters.
In Libya, residents of the eastern regions were warned by the authorities that the same storm was preparing to sweep the Libyan coast. The Libyan Meteorological Center had also alerted the authorities who in turn declared a state of emergency in the country. But the one that was presented as the “Medicane” – contraction of Mediterranean and hurricane (hurricane in English) – did not seem to overly worry the population who did not take care to follow the recommendations, reports Ouest-France.
It must be said that the country is not used to being swept by such storms at this time of year. But, according to climate experts, the heat combined with the “omega blocking” phenomenon, which blocks atmospheric circulation at high altitudes, persisted over western Europe last week. This meteorological phenomenon “caused Atlantic disturbances to drift” towards the eastern Mediterranean. Consequence: the storm blew over regions usually spared.
“One of the major challenges in this race against time remains access to disaster victims,” notes Olivier Routeau, of Première Urgence Internationale. Many bridges and roads were cut by landslides during the floods, which made the arrival of relief very complicated, if not impossible, in the hardest hit areas.
Left to their own devices, residents reported on social media that they were unable to save loved ones or neighbors from drowning or extract them from the rubble.
Libya has been plunged into chaos since the death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, as two authorities vie for power, one in the east led by Khalifa Haftar and not recognized by the international community and the other in the West, recognized by the UN.
International aid, which is starting to flow in, should not be facilitated by the armed factions which are blighting the country. Taking advantage of the chaos, militias have set up in the cities, some belonging to the radical Islamic movement such as in Derna with “Ansar al-Sharia”, the jihadists of the Islamic State group chased out in 2018 by the forces of Marshal Khalifa Haftar, the strong man from the East.
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