Libya floods: Derna rebuilds but essential services are lacking

On the night of September 10-11, 2023, Storm Daniel hit the east coast, causing floods and the rupture of two dams upstream of Derna. The tragedy left around 4.000 dead, thousands missing and more than 40.000 displaced, according to the UN, although the final toll remains controversial.

Today, the devastated city, which had 120.000 inhabitants before the disaster, is a giant construction site, with the deafening noise of bulldozers.

For Mohamad Azouz, a disaster-stricken resident, the reconstruction is taking too long. "In our street, the construction companies' work is progressing slowly. It should have been taken care of before, if only for the morale of the people," he told an AFP correspondent.

Sanitation and hygiene issues

Once dotted with shades of white against the blue of the Mediterranean, Derna is now mostly gray, the color of the concrete of the buildings under reconstruction. Aerial views show cranes on construction sites and on the banks of the dried-up wadi that runs through the city, where the raging floods have carried rubble and corpses out to sea.

Since the fall and death of dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Libya has been plunged into chaos, divided into two opposing camps with, in the west, a government recognized by the UN, led by Abdelhamid Dbeibah, facing a parallel executive affiliated with the powerful Khalifa Haftar, who dominates the east and the south.

Belgacem Haftar, one of his sons, who heads the rich Libya Reconstruction Fund, recently assured media including AFP that "all the projects underway in Derna" were 70% complete.

He mentioned 3.500 rebuilt homes and the complete restoration of the electricity network, roads and schools.

While acknowledging the reconstruction efforts, five NGOs including the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and the NRC (Norwegian Refugee Council) stressed that "many displaced people are living in precarious conditions" and that "many families are having difficulty meeting basic needs".

They cited health facilities and communities facing "poor quality of drinking water", sanitation and hygiene problems, a lack of trained health personnel, and "large numbers of displaced families still without adequate shelter".

The impact of the floods can also be measured by the after-effects suffered by the survivors. The five NGOs have also recommended "strengthening psycho-social support, particularly for children, in the face of the continuing emergence of new cases of trauma and anxiety."

Rows of graves

The main difficulty was "recording the deaths," Ashraf Mansour, a volunteer with the Libyan Red Crescent, told AFP as he walked through the graves of a cemetery created by the Authority for the Search and Identification of the Missing, 5 km south of Derna.

"As of September 5, we had 3.028 reports" of deaths from families, Kamal al-Siwi, director of this national body, told AFP.

According to him, the authorities have counted "3.734 bodies found in homes submerged by water, in the sea or on the banks of the wadi" and the difference of "700" bodies represents cases not reported by relatives.

In the days following the tragedy, much higher tolls were put forward by NGOs, officials and the media.

Political scientist Anas el-Gomati recently told AFP that more than 10.000 DNA samples had been provided to the authorities by relatives of the missing (in addition to the officially listed remains). For Mr. Gomati, the real figure is therefore rather "between 14.000 and 24.000" victims if we also count the decimated families who no longer have anyone to claim them.

"We have heard frightening figures. The media and some have spoken of between 50 and 100.000 deaths," Mr Siwi stressed, expressing doubts about these "figures which have remained engraved in people's minds".

A year after the tragedy, in the "Cemetery of the Victims of Derna", rows of graves are still waiting to be named, with a concrete block and a numbered plaque as a stele.