Cyclone Daniel, a phenomenon of climate change, is not the only one to blame for the deadly floods in Libya. Years of neglect also explain the rupture of the two dams that caused a tsunami of 33 million cubic meters capable of sweeping away entire buildings. The poor state of the infrastructure, the lack of security measures, as well as the absence of maintenance, had been warned by residents, local authorities and scientists.
Derna, a city of 100,000 inhabitants located 250 kilometers east of Benghazi, is on the banks of the Wadi Derna valley, which crosses the homonymous river from the mountains to the Mediterranean Sea. This extension of 575 square kilometers has suffered several floods, including the one of 1959, which was particularly catastrophic, so in 1970 a Yugoslav company built the two dams that were supposed to protect the city. And they proved it during the downpours of 1986, in which they prevented major damage.
The dam closest to the city is called Al-Bilad, which is one kilometer to the south and had a storage capacity of 1.5 million cubic meters of water. Thirteen kilometers further south, towards the mountains, is the Abu Mansour Dam, which could store up to 22.5 million cubic meters. Both infrastructures were built with a compacted clay core with a stone shell that is less resistant than concrete.
The last 50 years without floods brought peace of mind and confidence to the inhabitants and administrators of the valley, who began to build on the banks of the river that were previously closed off as highly floodable land. But the negligence is not explained so much by this behavior, but because the warnings that urgently called for revisions and repairs had been heard for years.
“The dams have not been subject to maintenance since 2002” due to the political crisis in the African country, lamented the vice mayor of Derna, Ahmed Madrud. And the dams “are not particularly large”, he added. The first dam that failed, the furthest away, was only 70 meters high. Once the water passed through it, it pooled behind the second dam, which eventually caused it to break.
Omar al-Mukhtar University hydrologist Abdelwanees A. R. Ashoor warned in November 2022 that infrastructure required immediate attention. “The results showed that the study area has a high flood risk potential. Therefore, the dams in the Wadi Derna basin need periodic maintenance. In addition, it is necessary to increase the plant cover to reduce the phenomenon of desertification”, he wrote.
An expert assured Al-Wasat that the dams were in poor condition. “The chaos of security and the negligence of the Libyan authorities when closely monitoring security measures led to the catastrophe,” said Muhammad.
Years of war and the lack of a central government – ??the country is divided into rival governments, one in the east and one in the west – have left Libya with an infrastructure vulnerable to intense rains. After the overthrow of Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011, Derna became a center for Islamist extremist groups, bombed by Egyptian airstrikes and then besieged by forces loyal to eastern strongman Khalifa Haftar and troops which they took control of in 2019.
Like other cities in the east of the country, it has not seen much reconstruction or investment since the revolution. Most of the modern infrastructure was built during the Gaddafi era, including the demolished dams in the Wadi Valley.
These days we read opinions that consider that the neglect was already coming from the Gaddafi era, which, although it brought some improvements, had the eastern part of the country abandoned, while others point out that Marshal Haftar also does not take care of the inhabitants of the region.
