Libyan engineers warned officials over crumbling dams two decades before catastrophe that killed 11,000 people – as it’s revealed £2M set aside for vital maintenance work was NEVER spent
Libya’s government was for years warned that residents of the city of Derna were in ‘extreme’ danger because the two crumbling dams south of the city were inadequately designed and poorly funded.
Floods overwhelmed the Abu Mansur and Al Bilad dams, sending a wall of water several metres high through Derna, destroying neighbourhoods and sweeping people out to sea last weekend.
The country is still reeling from the natural disaster, which has so far killed more than 11,000 and left a further 10,000 missing.
While the dams were in use for decades, after they were built in the 1970s, the autocratic government of the oil-rich country dragged its feet on its repairs, finally commissioning a study in 1998 that revealed deep cracks and fissures in the dams.
But works only began in 2010, three years after the government, then run by Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, contracted a Turkish company to repair the dams after it dragged its feet and did not pay the company.
The deadly floods have so far killed 11,000 people, and more people are expected to be pronounced dead in the coming days
The city of Derna has been devastated by the floods
Entire neighbourhoods were taken out by the floods
Four months after repairs began, civil war broke out in the country shortly after the Arab Spring, causing work on the dam to cease and not be picked up again.
Dr. Abdelwanees Ashoor, a top hyraulics engineer at Omar Al-Mukhtar University in Libya, warned in a 2022 paper that a bad flood would have ‘catastrophic’ consequences for the area.
‘In the event of a huge flood, the result will be catastrophic for the people of the [valley] and the city,’ he wrote at the time.
Dr. Ashoor said in his paper that the engineers who built the dams in the late 1970s underestimated the amount of rain expected in the region.
On top of this, the area had undergone desertification, meaning that there was less plantlife that would normally be able to absorb runoff flood water.
At the time, Dr. Ashoor called on the Libyan government to take the problem seriously and reducing the risk of severe flooding by ‘conducting periodic maintenance’ and ‘increase vegetation’ in the area.
He wasn’t the only person who warned the government that their inaction would lead to severe consequences.
Map shows the flood damage extent in Derna, Libya. The Libyan Red Crescent last night said the death toll in the city has soared to 11,300, with hundreds more confirmed dead across eastern Libya
Satellite images reveal that whole area of Derna were wiped out by the flood
Members of the rescue teams from the Egyptian army carry a dead body in Derna as they walk in the mud between the destroyed buildings, after a powerful storm and heavy rainfall hit Libya, on September 13, 2023
Derna city following a powerful storm and heavy rainfall that hit the country on September 13, 2023
In 2021, state auditors found that nearly £2 million allocated to the maintenance of the two dams had simply not been spent, and called out the country’s Water Resources Ministry for its ‘inaction.’
Libya’s top prosecutor has since pledged that he will investigate how local authorities and previous governments allocated the dams’ maintenance funds.
General Prosecutor al-Sediq al-Sour said at a news conference late on Friday: ‘I reassure citizens that whoever made mistakes or negligence, prosecutors will certainly take firm measures, file a criminal case against him and send him to trial.’
It is not currently clear how the investigation will be carried out, given that the country has been split between two rival administrations that both claim to be the rightful leaders of the country.
Jalel Harchaoui, an expert on Libya at London’s Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said that an investigation could pose ‘a unique challenge’ to judicial authorities, since it could lead to the highest ranks of leadership in eastern and western Libya.
Satellite imagery has revealed the extent of the flood’s damage
While states across the world recognise the government that currently resides in Libya’s capital, Tripoli, disaster-struck Derna lies in the east, under the control of a rival administration run by the Libyan National Army of Khalifa Hafter, which uneasily controls the city after taking it over in 2019.
Hafter, 79, has played a major role in Libyan politics for decades, first entering the fray when he took part in Colonel Gadaffi’s 1969 coup against the then-monarchy and became one of the soon-to-be-dictator’s top officers.
Gadaffi told a journalist at the time: ‘He was my son, and I was like his spiritual father.’
But about 20 years after this, Hafter ended up starting a failed coup against his former mentor after Gadaffi abandoned him during the infamous ‘Toyota War’ after he and 400 of his men were captured by the Toyota Land Cruiser-driving Chad forces as the two countries fought over a strategic part of their shared border.
Local officials in the city had warned the public about the coming storm and last Saturday ordered residents to evacuate coastal areas in Derna, fearing a surge from the sea. But there was no warning about the dams, which collapsed early Monday as most residents were asleep in their homes.
More than 10,000 people are missing, according to the Libyan Red Crescent. A week on, searchers are still digging through mud and hollowed-out buildings, looking for bodies and possible survivors.
Authorities and aid groups have voiced concern about the spread of waterborne diseases and shifting of explosive ordnance from Libya’s recent conflicts.
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