Karsten Haustein, a climate scientist and meteorologist at Leipzig University, said in a statement that Daniel dumped 440 millimeters (15.7 inches) of rain on eastern Libya in a short time. A key question was how the rains were able to burst through two dams outside Derna - whether because of poor maintenance or sheer volume of rain. Red Crescent teams from other parts of Libya also arrived in Derna on Tuesday morning but extra excavators and other equipment had yet to get there.įlooding often happens in Libya during rainy season, but rarely with this much destruction. “We were stunned by the amount of destruction … the tragedy is very significant, and beyond the capacity of Derna and the government,” Abduljaleel told The Associated Press on the phone from Derna. Many bodies were believed trapped under rubble or had been washed out into the Mediterranean Sea, said eastern Libya’s health minister, Othman Abduljaleel. They also used inflatable boats to retrieve bodies from the water. On Tuesday, local emergency responders, including troops, government workers, volunteers and residents dug through rubble looking for the dead. Libya’s National Meteorological Center said Tuesday it issued early warnings for Storm Daniel, an “extreme weather event,” 72 hours before its occurrence, and notified all governmental authorities by e-mails and through media … “urging them to take preventive measures.” It said that Bayda recorded a record 414.1 millimeters (16.3 inches) of rain from Sunday to Monday. Cars lifted by the flood were left dumped on top of each other. Multi-story apartment buildings that once were well back from the river had facades ripped away and concrete floors collapsed. Videos posted online by residents showed large swaths of mud and wreckage where the raging waters had swept away neighborhoods on both banks of the river. The wall of water “erased everything in its way,” said one resident, Ahmed Abdalla. Flash floods were unleashed down Wadi Derna, a river running from the mountains through the city and into the sea. As the storm pounded the coast, Derna residents said they heard loud explosions and realized that dams outside the city had collapsed. The destruction came to Derna and other parts of eastern Libya on Sunday night. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres conveyed his solidarity with the Libyan people and said the United Nations “is working with local, national and international partners to get urgently needed humanitarian assistance to those in affected areas,” U.N. The situation in Libya is “as devastating as the situation in Morocco,” Ramadan said, referring to the deadly earthquake that hit near the city of Marrakesh on Friday night. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. He said later Tuesday that more than 40,000 people have been displaced. briefing in Geneva via videoconference from Tunisia that at least 10,000 people were still missing. Derna’s ambulance authority said earlier Tuesday that 2,300 had died.īut the toll is likely to be higher, said Tamer Ramadan, Libya envoy for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The state-run news agency quoted Mohammed Abu-Lamousha, a spokesman for the east Libya interior ministry, as saying that more than 5,300 people had died in Derna alone. More than 1,500 corpses were collected, and half of them had been buried as of Tuesday evening, the health minister for eastern Libya said.Īt least one official put the death toll at more than 5,000. Another image showed a mass grave piled with bodies. The floods damaged or destroyed many access roads to the coastal city of some 89,000.įootage showed dozens of bodies covered by blankets in the yard of one hospital. Outside help was only just starting to reach Derna on Tuesday, more than 36 hours after the disaster struck.
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