Thousands of people have died in Libya due to severe flooding caused by Mediterranean Storm Daniel. Even more are missing. How is it possible for a storm to take so many lives?
The city of Derna, located on the northeastern Libyan coast, has suffered the worst destruction. Online and satellite images show the extent of damage in the city, with entire city blocks disappearing overnight.
September 13 Satellite Imagery, Provided by Planet LabsThis is one of the clearest ways to see how much of the city was destroyed.
In the before and after visualization, you can see how many buildings in Derna were washed away in the heavy floods.
Zooming in on a portion of the imagery, you can see how one building – the 7-storey tall Beech Tower – was cut in half by flood waters.
A video from the ground shared on Twitter showed how much of the tower and surrounding buildings were destroyed.
The massive floodwaters that hit the city are believed to have been the result of the collapse of two dams upstream from Derna following heavy rains from a Mediterranean storm.
It appears that the dams have broken in the middle of the night. Residents likely had little, if any, time to react.
In a video shared online, you can see the collapsed dam the morning after floods devastated the city.
“The two dams, the two dams in the city – they were supposed to be repaired two years ago. There was some water in both dams but nobody said anything about it. Nobody did anything about it,” Mubarak El said. Giathi, Libyan flood survivors.
Search and rescue efforts are ongoing, with members of the Libyan National Army using bulldozers, helicopters and excavators to remove mud that has accumulated on most of Derna’s roads.
Efforts are complicated by the fact that Libya is technically under two administrations, divided between the UN-backed government in the west and the military government in the east, where Derna is.
Despite past hostilities, there is solidarity between the two sides to deliver aid to those who need it most in flood-hit parts of eastern Libya.
Countries like the United States, France, Germany, Turkey and Italy are now sending aid and assistance.