How the Civil War in Libya Resulted in a Government that Left Derna to Drown

 by Juliette Franks

On September 10th Storm Daniel, a tropical-like hurricane called a medicane struck Libya. The storm involved high winds of 85km/h and 400m of rainfall within 24 hours of reaching the Libyan coast. Areas across north-eastern Libya were badly affected by the storm, as it caused widespread major flooding. 

In Libya, ​3,958 deaths have been reported and over 9,000 people are still missing, roads and even entire villages were swept away whilst parts of the city of Derna were completely submerged. After two dams collapsed, tsunami-like waves crashed through Derna, carrying debris with it and causing the extent of the damage.

Libya has been politically unstable since 2011, with a civil war that lasted from 2014-2020, and the subsequent government situation meant that critical infrastructure has been neglected. Since 2020, there have been two competing government - Hifter in the east leading the coalition of factions known as the Libyan National Army and the UN supported Government of National Accord in Tripoli. The political turmoil meant that there were disputes over funds allocation, and for the past three years there has been no development budget in Libya, which infrastructure falls under, leading to neglect of the dams that were built to protect Derna from flooding. Although specialists had been saying for years that the dams, which were originally built in the 1970s, required attention and were not up to standard, they had not been maintained despite repeated floods that struck the city in the previous years.

“In the event of a big flood, the consequences will be disastrous for the residents of the valley and the city,” Abdelwanees Ashoor, a professor of civil engineering said in 2022.

The lack of action from the government clearly worsened the impacts of the floods tenfold, so when they collapsed due to neglect, the floods easily ravaged Derna. 

Furthermore, confusion over mixed warnings from disjointed government officials meant that the death toll may have been larger than it should have been. Whilst some announcements were given telling people to evacuate coastal areas, a curfew was also put in place on the 8th of September, urging people to stay home as a part of ‘security measures to face expected weather conditions’. There is much confusion as to who announced what, with reports stating that the mayor of Derna both ordered the curfew, and announced an evacuation. This chaos resulted in the high death tolls and also the huge amount of 10,000 confirmed missing people at the peak of the disaster. Again, this was a result of the split government being very unprepared to deal with a natural disaster of this nature, despite the frequency of floods that Derna has experienced. 

The city of Derna already had 2,800 internally displaced people because of the civil war, and the lack of government action has meant that little effort has been done to find these people somewhere to permanently settle. The disaster triggered more displacement, included for those already displaced. There is an estimated number of 30,000 displaced now in Derna. The biggest issue with this is the concerns surrounding health. Lydia already struggled with providing clean water, and now that the floods have damaged water infrastructure and displaced so many people, the threat of water-borne diseases spreading is very prevalent. Experts have already warned that sewage has contaminated water supplies, rendering them unsafe for consumption. Diseases such as dysentery and cholera can spread rapidly in dirty, overcrowded areas that are created as a result of the floods.

Overall, the result of the fractured government caused the storm to have much more drastic consequences, starting with the collapse of the dams and extreme floods in Derna, and resulting in widespread destruction and a devastating loss of life.