Youssef, a soldier who has fought in the three conflicts that Libya has experienced since the fall of the Gaddafi regime in 2011, claims without the slightest doubt: “The situation in Derna is much more serious than in the worst moments of the war. “ .” The center of the country’s fourth-largest city, which had more than 100,000 residents before Storm Daniel, appears to have been under bombardment in recent hours. What was one of the Islamic State’s strongholds in 2016 is now barely reduced to rubble, cars turned into twisted iron and skeletons of buildings ready to collapse at any moment. Amid the apocalyptic vision, groups of volunteers in personal protective equipment (PPE) and disposable gowns continue to search for survivors, but find only bodies.
A week ago, Storm Daniel crossed the Mediterranean and hit northeastern Libya in the form of a tornado. The unprecedented amount of rain caused two dams in the city of Derna to collapse last Saturday evening with known and reported deficiencies in maintenance, triggering a flood that washed away dozens of buildings with many residents inside. Since then, the death toll estimated by the Red Crescent has steadily risen to currently 11,000. Eastern Libyan government sources put the number at 20,000.
An area in the center of Derna, on Friday, after the flood.Ricardo García Vilanova
“This afternoon alone we recovered the bodies of three and a half people. Half of it belonged to a ten-year-old girl,” explains Ahmed Aljaer with a lost look. The young man is referring to the small corner of the beach where he is, where dozens of civilians from all over Libya are searching for bodies with the help of an excavator in a mixture of stones, reeds and all sorts of objects carried away by the tide. Someone screams and a human chain immediately forms to carry the black bag to the ambulance. “We have only found one living person for two days,” complains Aljaer, who comes from Tripoli, the capital of the half of Libya ruled by a United Nations-backed executive. Derna is located in the eastern part and is under the control of Marshal Khalifa Hafter and his so-called National Liberation Army (ELN).
“We once again felt like one people”
Libya has been a fractured country since the fall of Gaddafi, with two rival governments now forced to cooperate. “This catastrophe has given us the feeling of being one people again, across political divisions,” explains Aljaer, as remains of the victims continue to emerge. Like him, dozens of Libyans from the West have moved to this region to help in any way they can. Many of them have painted the names of their cities and communities on their cars to show their solidarity.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without restrictions.
Subscribe to
“We have removed dead children and adults from cars, from houses, from basements and under rubble. We are doing it so that their family and friends can find peace,” said Ali Milad, a mechanic from Benghazi who traveled to Derna in his van on Monday with some acquaintances. The scale of the destruction is so debilitating that volunteers can often only listen to those who, like Ayoub, have lost everything.
The man moves along at a rapid pace with his 13-year-old son. Everyone carries a bag with blankets from the beginning international humanitarian aid. They stop in front of the stone mountain that was once their home. It is at the zero point of the reverse tsunami, as the flood that suffered in Derna is increasingly called. The collapse of the two dams caused two huge waves that destroyed everything in their path, dividing the city in two, including the eight bridges that connected them. The volunteers record the panorama with their cell phones, not believing that they are watching a real Armageddon. Ayoub’s father and one of his nephews slept in one of the missing buildings. Many families have lost several of their members because in Libya, as in other Arab countries, it is common for them to live on the same block or in neighboring houses.
“The water reached the roof. We left the house and fled to the mountain to be high up. When I returned to rescue my father, his house was gone. “We found his body after searching for him for hours,” the man screams, crying and pointing his hands to the sky. “The sea carried the dead to Tobruk,” he shouts desperately. Tobruk and Derna are 170 kilometers apart. When he is at a loss for words, he sets off for his daughter’s house, where he now lives with his wife and son. There are no official figures on the number of homeless people, but local organizations speak of several tens of thousands.
Danger of a cholera outbreak
A few meters away, several men work to drain water concentrated in the basement of a building to avoid possible sources of illness. The government warns of the risk of a cholera outbreak due to the large number of human and other animal corpses accumulating in the city and its surrounding areas. In fact, most rescue workers wear masks to avoid the strong smell of decay that quickly clings to clothing and noses and is difficult to get rid of. Among the local rescuers, the groups of firefighters and first responders who arrived from countries such as Turkey, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates and Spain stand out for their uniforms.
One of them is Paco Alarcón Parra, a member of Firefighters Without Borders. “What we can do now is to recover bodies because there are no more signs of life,” he explains to his colleagues from various cities in Spain. Although they were ready to travel just hours after the flooding in Derna became known, the bureaucratic hurdles did not allow them to travel to Libya until Thursday evening, when the Repsol company chartered a plane for their transfer. This includes a team that specializes in underwater rescues. After scanning the coastline with drones, they identify the places where bodies are most likely to be found. “Although the sea continues to bring back bodies, it will take days for many of them to surface. And we have to remember that they can appear dozens of kilometers from here,” complains Luis Enrique Utiel, head of the Fire Department without Borders emergency team. “We know that with every hour that passes, we have less chance of saving someone,” he concludes helplessly.
To get to Derna from Susa, the city where the flight from Madrid landed, you have to endure a winding drive over unpaved roads. The storm tore away parts of the highway connecting both cities along the coast, so a journey of less than an hour now requires more than three hours. A transfer that these journalists carried out with the military escort assigned to them by the Libyan government to accompany them throughout their stay.
“I lived on the second floor. First the first wave passed and we were saved. But then came the second one, which was higher than the fourth floor. One building hit the next building and they all collapsed. “My uncle and my grandfather died,” Bilab says next to the mosque, whose roofs have branches, blankets and toys hanging from its roof. Bilab still doesn’t understand how his building resisted. Thanks to that, he is still alive.
Follow all international information on Facebook and Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits