Years of political infighting, corruption and poor maintenance of public infrastructure are as much to blame for Libya’s flooding catastrophe which has killed at least 11,000 people as the havoc wrecked by Storm Daniel.
Experts say the turmoil created by Libya’s rival political regimes and the lack of any new investment in infrastructure left the country totally unprepared to tackle an emergency like the medicane unleashed by Storm Daniel sweeping across the Sahara. As the medicane – the informal name for a weather system which develops a central eye like a cyclone – settled over the eastern Libyan coast, more than 414 mm of rain fell in 24 hours, a record for the district.
And it was this torrential rain which caused the two dams – or the dams of death as they are being called – to collapse close to Derna, which resulted in the devastating flash flooding which swept through the city, sucking thousands of people and about a quarter of the buildings out to sea.
As rescue workers from all around the world race to save survivors buried under the rubble, the Red Cross estimates that up 20,000 may have died, another 30,000 are missing and that up to nearly one million people in the surrounding district may be affected by the flooding and the dams bursting.
According to reports in Al Jazeera, neither of the dams which were built in the 1970s have been properly maintained since 2002, well before Libya’s dictator Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011.
Yet only last year researchers at Omar Al-Mukhtar University warned in a paper that the two dams needed urgent work, pointing out that there was “a high potential for flood risk”. No action was taken despite government funds being allocated to the dams for maintenance a decade ago.
Adding to the mounting criticism of how Libya’s warring political leaders have allowed the oil-rich country to become so neglected that it is now considered a failed state, there is another blame-game now underway against the authorities. It’s been reported that while the Libyan weather centre warned the local population to evacuate coastal areas ahead of the storm, there were no warnings about the dams collapsing.
Petteri Taalas, head of the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, claims that if there had been a normal operating meteorological service working in Libya, it could have issued the warnings. He added: “The emergency management authorities would have been able to evacuate.” UN officials have also criticised the lack of adequate warning systems which could have prevented many deaths.
Calls for inquiries are now coming from all quarters. In Libya’s capital, Tripoli, prime minister, Abdul-Hamid Dbeibah, has publicly acknowledged the maintenance issues, and called on the Public Prosecutor to urgently investigate the dams’ collapse.
So too has Libya’s presidential council chair, Mohamed al-Menfi, based in eastern Tobruk, who said he wants the inquiry to hold everyone who made a “mistake or neglected by abstaining or taking actions” that led to the collapse of Derna’s dams.
While al-Menfi’s government is leading relief efforts, his Tripoli-based rival has given $412 million for the reconstruction of Derna and other eastern towns, and Tripoli has sent an armed convoy with humanitarian aid.
For now, the two rival camps are working together, or at least there is the semblance of unity. But the scars of this tragedy – and the tribal and religious divisions they have allowed to fester throughout the country since toppling Gaddafi – will take decades to recover from.
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