The missed chances to save Libya’s flood victims from disaster

Published

2 years ago

September 15, 2023

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Storm Daniel was Greece’s worst storm in recorded history but for Libya it would trigger a disaster of unimaginable scale.

Sky’s Data and Forensics team looks at the warning signs that were missed and how human error exacerbated a natural disaster.

The storm began forming over the Ionian Sea on 4 September and after battering Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece it made its way south across the Mediterranean towards Africa.

Some warnings in Libya were issued but critics say more action could have been taken before the flash floods hit.

Weather warnings

The country’s National Meteorological Centre started issuing warnings of heavy rain last Friday and urged all governmental authorities to take caution.

Based on these warnings, a state of emergency was announced in the eastern regions.

But no mitigations were put in place and no evacuations were carried out, as the storm made landfall in the eastern city of Derna.

Footage verified by Sky News shows a torrent of water swelling the Wadi river, which runs from the mountains and through the city, in the early hours of Monday morning.

Residents were seen filming the water from the riverbank by the city’s al Sahaba Mosque. The flash floods and the collapse of the dams would later sweep away entire neighbourhoods and kill more than 11,000 people.

Old dams from 1970s

But it wasn’t just the weather that impacted the outcome of this disaster.

The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said Libya’s National Meteorological Centre “didn’t address the risk posed by the ageing dams” which burst.

The two dams located upstream around 5km apart were built in the 1970s.

A hydrological report published just last year warned that maintenance of the two structures was required to prevent catastrophic flooding.

But the deputy mayor of Derna has said neither dam had been maintained since 2002.

The report, in the Sebha University Journal of Pure and Applied Sciences, said the area has a “high potential for flood risk”, adding that dams of Wadi Derna basin needed “periodic maintenance” and that large floods could cause one of the dams to collapse making those in Derna vulnerable.

Before and after satellite images of one of the dams shows the extent of the damage after flash floods ripped through the structure.

Both the infrastructure and the politics at play have impacted this disaster.

Professor in Climate Risks & Resilience, University of Reading, Liz Stephens said: “There’s no such thing as a natural disaster.

“So there might be an extreme weather event, but it’s that interplay with the community, the governance and the people on the ground that leads to that risk.

“In this case, if the dams were not there, then we wouldn’t have seen large loss of life as a result of their collapse.”

Sky News will air a special programme – Libya floods: The city swept away – at midday on Saturday.

A curfew and no evacuation

Authorities have also been blamed for their initial response and handling of the disaster.

While critics say evacuations should have taken place to move residents of Derna to safer areas, the authorities instead told the population to hunker down.

On 10 September the mayor met with the security directorate of Derna, images posted on Facebook show.

The pair discussed a curfew and urged residents to stay in their homes.

They say the measure was put in place for citizens’ safety, but that announcement was met with anger and complaints at the time and afterwards in comments on the Facebook page.

The head of the WMO, secretary-general Petteri Taalas, added that evacuations should have been ordered and Libya’s government was “not functional”.

Had there been a weather service which could have issued warnings, emergency management authorities would have been able to carry out evacuations, he added.

For Libya, rescue operations are complicated by political fractures in a country which has been at war on-and-off with no strong central government since a NATO-backed uprising toppled Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

But the deadly combination of a powerful storm, inadequate infrastructure and an unstable political environment has left the people of Libya victim to a disaster which might largely have been avoided.

World

Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

Published

6 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.

The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.

Gaza latest: Follow live updates

The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.

The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.

No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.

Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.

There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.

This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.

It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.

Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.

I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.

His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.

“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.

Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.

“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

12 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

18 hours ago

August 10, 2025