More than 5,000 people died in Libya after torrential rain caused two dams near the coastal city of Derna to burst, destroying large parts of the city and washing entire neighborhoods into the sea, local authorities said on Tuesday.
Libya, a North African country shattered by war, was ill-prepared for the storm named Daniel that swept across the Mediterranean and devastated its coast. The country is administered by two rival governments, complicating rescue and relief efforts, and its infrastructure was poorly maintained after more than a decade of political chaos.
At least 5,200 people died in the city of Derna alone, said Tarek al-Kharraz, spokesman for the Interior Ministry of the government that oversees eastern Libya, according to the Libyan television channel al-Masar. At least 20,000 people were displaced.
Citizens who fled Derna left the city “as if they were born today and had nothing,” an army official said.
Thousands more are missing and the death toll is expected to rise in the coming days. The flooding damaged buildings, sank vehicles and blocked roads, impeding access to the hardest-hit areas.
Analysts said the country’s problems – political division, economic instability, corruption, environmental degradation and crumbling infrastructure – appeared to converge in a single catastrophe when dams collapsed south of the city. The floods came days after an earthquake in Morocco, another North African country, that killed more than 2,900 people.
But to Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan policy research center, the two events felt completely different because the timing of the earthquakes is unpredictable compared to a storm like Daniel, which can be predicted hours or days in advance .
Even after last week’s storm showed its destructive power in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, killing more than a dozen people, Libyan authorities appeared to have no serious plan to monitor the dams, warn residents or evacuate them, said El Gomati.
“We say Mother Nature, but this is the act of man – it is the incompetence of Libya’s political elites,” El Gomati said. “There are no words to describe the biblical level of suffering these people endure.”
The dams released water that poured through Derna, a city of about 100,000 people, Ahmed al-Mismari, a spokesman for the Libyan National Army, the dominant political force in the region, said in a televised news conference on Monday.
“It is the first time we have faced this type of weather,” Mr. al-Mismari said, calling the scenario “completely unexpected.” The conditions made it difficult to organize rescue and relief efforts, with all roads to the worst-hit areas either closed or nearly closed, he said.
The flooding was reminiscent of the impact of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the storm struck Louisiana and became a disaster after levees in New Orleans burst and flooded large parts of the city.
It also highlighted how climate change, combined with political conflict and economic failure, can increase the scale of disasters.
Libya is divided between the internationally recognized government based in the capital Tripoli and a separately administered region in the east, including Derna – where the Libyan National Army and its commander Khalifa Hifter, a longtime militia leader, are the main power broker.
“Libya has experienced one war after another, one political crisis after another, over the last decade,” said Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst at the International Crisis Group. “Essentially what this has meant is that there hasn’t really been much investment in the country’s infrastructure over the last decade.”
The country is also particularly vulnerable to climate change and severe storms. According to the United Nations, warming is causing the Mediterranean Sea’s waters to expand and sea levels to rise, leading to coastal erosion and flooding, with low-lying coastal areas of Libya particularly at risk.
Most of Libya’s population lives in coastal areas and powerful storm surges could cause widespread damage to infrastructure, warned a 2021 report by the Climate Security Expert Network, a group that advises on climate-related security risks.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, hurricane-like storms occur over the Mediterranean on average once or twice a year, usually in the fall. As human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases warm the planet, rainstorms of all kinds generally cause greater amounts of precipitation for one simple reason: Hotter air can hold more moisture.
“The recent Daniel storm has brought to light the fact that Libya is ill-prepared for the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events,” said Malak Altaeb, a Libyan consultant and researcher on environmental policy in the Middle East and North Africa. “The need for urgent action to address these pressing issues can no longer be overstated.”
Speaking to al-Masar on Tuesday, a local official warned that another dam in the eastern region was full of water and on the verge of collapse. The Jaza Dam – located between Derna and the city of Benghazi – needs maintenance to prevent another disaster, said Tocra municipality mayor Mahmoud Al Sharaima.
Derna is located on the northeast coast of Libya and was built on the ruins of an ancient Greek colony. Mr. El Gomati, the director of the Policy Research Center, described it as a beautiful coastal city once known for its culture, poetry and theater.
“The residents always claimed it was a piece of heaven that fell from the sky,” he said.
Ms. Gazzini, the analyst, recalled visiting several months ago and crossing the valley, which flooded that weekend. “I’ve never seen water and I always thought, ‘Why is there such a big valley in this empty space?'” she said.
But the dry riverbeds of the Arabian Peninsula and North Africa can quickly flood during heavy rain because the parched soil has difficulty absorbing the rain.
“What happened in Derna was unimaginable – in a desert country where this kind of flooding has never happened, you would never imagine such heavy rains,” Ms Gazzini said.
Political instability can also worsen environmental degradation from deforestation and illegal construction, said Ms. Altaeb, the adviser, reducing the land’s ability to absorb rain, increasing surface runoff and increasing the risk of flooding.
Libya experienced 42 years of autocratic rule under Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi before he was toppled by a revolt in 2011 during the Arab Spring.
Over the next decade, the country was torn apart by a civil war that attracted several foreign actors, including the United States. At one point, Turkey backed a provisional government in Tripoli, while Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt supported Mr. Hifter, a former Libyan general.
Today the country is governed by the western government based in Tripoli led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeiba and an eastern-based authority led by Osama Hamad. Dozens of armed groups remain influential, a point reinforced by deadly clashes in Tripoli last month.
It was unclear Tuesday how different authorities in Libya were coordinating search and rescue efforts as medical teams converged on the region to treat survivors and search for missing people.
Deliveries of relief supplies, including body bags and medical equipment, left Tripoli for Benghazi early on Tuesday, the government in Tripoli said.
A medical convoy of doctors, nurses and other volunteer rescue workers arrived in Benghazi on Tuesday morning, the government added. Several aid organizations also announced on Tuesday that they would expand their services in the country.
What is most needed, the Tripoli government said, are rescue workers, inspectors and others specialized in dealing with flood situations. Rescue teams sent by Turkey and the United Arab Emirates arrived in Benghazi on Tuesday, al-Masar said. President Biden said in a statement Tuesday that the United States is “sending emergency funds to relief agencies and coordinating with Libyan authorities and the United Nations to provide additional support.”
However, it was unclear how much aid had reached the hardest-hit areas; Benghazi is more than 180 miles by car from Derna and many of its roads have been closed by the floods, the Derna city council said on Monday. It called for the opening of a sea passage to Derna and urgent international intervention.
Communicating with loved ones proved difficult for flood-affected Libyans as phone service and electricity were disrupted by the storm. Telephone service was restored in some areas of Derna on Tuesday.
Facebook groups were full of requests from relatives of people in Derna asking about their loved ones.
“Residents are now taking to social media, compiling makeshift lists scribbled in old school textbooks and uploading them to a Facebook group called Derna Zoom to tell people who they lost,” El Gomati said.
Nada Rashwan contributed reporting from Cairo and Raymond Zhong contributed reporting from New York.