According to reports on the ground, dead bodies are everywhere in the eastern Libyan city of Derna. A large swath of Derna has been erased from the face of the earth, with block after block of apartment buildings and the old city being swept into the Mediterranean Sea after two dams burst after heavy rainfall on already saturated ground from storm Daniel—estimates of the dead range from 1500 to 2800 so far. But at least 10,000 are feared to have been swept into the sea in Derna and likely died from being crushed or by drowning. Other cities impacted are Benghazi, Sousse, and Al-Marj. Body counts are only estimates now; the situation and numbers are changing rapidly.
The storm is currently in the Sahara between Libya and Egypt. The power is decreasing, but Alexandria and the Nile Delta could be severely impacted by rainfall.
I fear that we have become so desensitized to the impacts of flooding we have seen so far this summer. And yet, Trump and Ukraine lead the recommended list, and the calamity is not even worth a mention on the front page of this site. I suppose it all comes down to what people are outraged about, and this disaster is apparently low on the outrage meter as yesterday's diary scrolls into oblivion this morning. For those who care, thank you, for you have merciful hearts.
The thing is that no one is safe anymore; those who won’t read climate news, even if there is a gun pointed at their head, are in for a big surprise. If they bothered to read, perhaps more would care that every living thing is at extreme risk of death and destruction; even the privileged will face the consequences. But they don’t and won’t educate themselves. Sorry, I’m off track, and those who ignore the unraveling of the climate won’t read these words anyway.
Below are catastrophic flooding events over just the past 11 days.
- Greece
- Turkey
- Bulgaria
- Libya
- Brazil
- Hong Kong
- Shanghai
- Spain
- Las Vegas
- Massachusetts, New Hampshire (last night)
Storm "Daniel" hit eastern Libya on Sunday afternoon, including the coastal cities of Jabal al-Akhdar (northeast) but also Benghazi where a curfew was decreed and schools closed. The region had already been affected by torrential rains for a few days. The east of the country is home to the main oil fields and terminals. The National Oil Company (NOC) has decreed a "state of maximum alert" and "suspended flights" between production sites where activity has been drastically reduced.
Rescue teams were dispatched Sunday to Derna, a city 900 km east of Tripoli and 300 km east of Benghazi that was partially destroyed during violent clashes in 2018 between the forces of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, strongman of eastern Libya, and radical Islamist groups that controlled the city. With a population of more than 100,000 inhabitants, the coastal city is crossed by a wadi that flows into the Mediterranean and has overflowed because of the storm on about fifty meters on each side, carrying away buildings and houses in its path, according to videos broadcast by the media.
From the Washington Post:
Libya’s infrastructure has suffered repeated blows over the course of a civil war that broke out after the fall of Moammar Gaddafi in 2011. The country now remains divided between rival governments in the east and the west.
The west, which houses the U.N.-backed government, has rushed to help the east after the apocalyptic images surfaced. Telecommunication networks were down on Monday and early Tuesday: Abdul Jalil said they had lost contact with Derna’s emergency services at 3:30 a.m. TV channel al-Masar said it also could not reach its correspondents on the ground.
General Khalifa Hifter, head of a coalition of factions and irregular fighters known as the Libyan National Army in the east, in a statement early on Tuesday called on other parts of the country to help the cities and towns in the Green Mountain area, which includes Derna and other affected places.
Warning images of the dead.
I’ll update as needed.