More than 5,000 people were killed, about 10,000 went missing, and 30,000 were displaced in Libya after torrential rains caused flooding on September 10 that burst dams, swept away buildings and destroyed nearly a quarter of the eastern port city of Derna.
The death toll is likely to rise significantly and may even double, a minister in the regional administration said, according to Reuters.
Experts suggest three key factors — extreme weather, vulnerable geography, and crumbling infrastructure — coalesced into one catastrophe, causing the most devastating floods to have hit North Africa in almost a century. We take a closer look.
Extreme Weather
The flooding has occurred in Libya’s eastern region, which witnessed extreme rainfall from Sept 10 to 11. Take the city of Al-Bayda, located near Derna, for example. Usually, it receives about half an inch of rain in Sept and about 21.4 inches of rain in an average year. But from Sept 10 night till the next day, the city reported a record rainfall of 414.1 mm — more than 16 inches — according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Similarly in Derna, where average monthly rainfall in the whole of September is under 1.5 mm, rainfall exceeded 150 mm in about two days. The rains were accompanied by strong winds of up to 80 kph, The Washington Post reported.
And what produced this torrential rainfall and wind? It was Storm Daniel, also known as Cyclone Daniel. Formed in Greece, the storm is also responsible for causing floods and deaths in Spain, Turkey and Bulgaria earlier this month.
Before reaching Libya, “Daniel transitioned into what is known as a ‘medicane,’ or tropical-like cyclone that occasionally forms over the Mediterranean Sea. The storm became stronger as it drew energy from the abnormally warm waters (the Mediterranean has been 2 to 3 degree Celsius warmer this year than in the past), before drifting to the south and unloading excessive rainfall over northeastern Libya, where rain flowing down the mountainous terrain overwhelmed dams,” The Post added.
Focus on the words: abnormally warm waters. Medicanes are known to be weak storms that don’t last long. But higher sea surface temperatures (obviously a consequence of global warming), help them become stronger and last longer — when storms travel across hot oceans, they gather more water vapour and heat, resulting in more powerful winds, heavier rainfall and more flooding when they reach the land.
Vulnerable geography
The floods seem to have caused the most destruction in Derna — a coastal city with an estimated 100,000 inhabitants. So far, Derna alone has recorded the death of more than 5,300 people. Videos on social media show submerged buildings, schools and houses.
One reason behind the city’s widespread damage is its location. It is situated at the end of a valley and bisected by the Wadi Derna, a seasonal river that flows from mountains to the south (towards the sea) and is normally protected from flooding by dams.
“But on Sunday night, Storm Daniel pounded the coast and residents of Derna reported hearing loud explosions before they realised dams outside the city had collapsed, unleashing flash floods down Wadi Derna that eventually crashed into the city,” a report by Sky News mentions.
Derna has two dams. The first one is about 12 km upstream from the city where two river valleys converge and the second one sits on the southern edge. After breaching the first dam, the floodwater probably continued downstream along the canyon and then swept off the second dam, entering the city centre, and smashing into buildings on either side, the report adds.
Crumbling infrastructure
The collapse of the two dams in Derna highlights the dilapidated infrastructure of Libya. The country has been gutted by a war between two rival factions for more than a decade. In Tripoli, Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah leads Libya’s internationally recognised government. In Benghazi, the rival prime minister, Ossama Hamad, heads the eastern administration, which is backed by powerful military commander Khalifa Hiftar.
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In the tussle for power, focus on socio-economic issues, including maintaining and developing infrastructure has been put on the backburner.
“You just had a sort of routine neglect of all infrastructure in Libya,” Stephanie T Williams, who served as special adviser on Libya to the UN secretary-general from 2021 to 2022, tells The Post. “Dams, desalination plants, electrical grids and roads have been left in disrepair throughout the country,” the newspaper quotes her saying.
Moreover, as flooding is quite rare in the region, Libya wasn’t prepared to face the calamity. There are no flood-resilient structures or roads in the country, especially in Derna. Any sort of early-warning system regarding such disasters also doesn’t exist.
