The Libyan authorities estimate that more than 10,000 people are missing after catastrophic floods pummeled the country’s northeast, the internationally recognized government said on Wednesday. It was an indication that the death toll, which has already surpassed 5,000, could rise further in coming days.
Desperately needed aid was trickling into the eastern half of the country. But with roads and bridges damaged or cut off, access to the hardest-hit city, Derna, on the Mediterranean coast remained a major hurdle to bringing in help, according to international aid groups.
Kamal Abubaker, who runs a government agency that tracks down and identifies missing people, said more than 10,000 were unaccounted for, according to official estimates, in addition to the more than 5,000 reported dead. More than 34,000 people have been displaced, aid groups said.
“The ultimate figures won’t be clear within a day or two or three,” Mr. Abubaker told The New York Times. “It may take weeks, months or even years, as the destruction is vast. The waters have dispersed the corpses over tens of kilometers.”
Libya, a North African nation divided by years of civil war and deep political and territorial divisions, was ill prepared for Storm Daniel, which swept across the Mediterranean Sea, battering its coastline and quickly destroying poorly maintained infrastructure. The country is run by two rival governments, one in the western half and another in the east, further complicating the rescue and aid efforts.
Torrential rains caused two dams to collapse over the weekend, and floods brought widespread death and destruction. The failures raised alarm over Libya’s dilapidated infrastructure.
On Tuesday, the mayor of the northeastern town of Tocra told al-Masar, a Libyan television channel, that a third dam in the eastern region, the Jaza dam, was filled with water and on the brink of collapse. That dam, between Derna and the major eastern city of Benghazi, needs maintenance to prevent another disaster, he warned.
Hours later, a military official with the Libyan National Army, the main authority in the east, raised concerns about the safety of the Qattara dam, next to Benghazi. A government statement sought to assure residents that both dams were functioning and under control. Nevertheless, the government said it was installing water pumps to relieve pressure on the Jaza dam.
The flooding began after heavy rains over the weekend burst through two dams south of Derna, unleashing torrents of water through the city of nearly 100,000 people. Much of Derna was destroyed as entire neighborhoods, including homes, schools and mosques, were swept away. The Derna City Council has called for the opening of a maritime passageway to the city and for urgent international intervention.
Rescue teams and some aid deliveries began reaching Derna on Monday via the damaged roads that made passage more difficult and time-consuming, said Tawfiq al-Shukri, a spokesman for Libya’s Red Crescent. Aid is also being sent to the airport in Al Bayda, he said, one of the towns in the stricken area.
International aid sent to the city of Benghazi, more than 180 miles away from Derna, have already been dispatched to disaster zone, Mr. al-Shukri said, including rescue teams from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
“When the aid arrives, it is immediately sent to the affected areas,” he said. “The needs are greater than our abilities and the aid that has come.”
Both the western and eastern entrances to the city were not passable, so the only way into Derna was from the south on an unpaved road, making the delivery of aid and the arrival of rescue teams slow, said Bashir Ben Amer, an aid worker with the International Rescue Committee in Libya.
But there is concern that, because of the wet conditions, the one functioning road may not hold up under the demands of the convoys pouring into the city, he said.
Many of the more than 30,000 people left homeless in the city have not tried to leave, though, he said.
“Most people are staying inside city, either looking for loved ones, or they are burying them,” he said.
But the Libyan National Army on Wednesday urged residents to leave, saying that the army was taking over Derna to coordinate relief efforts, al-Masar, reported.
Libya is especially vulnerable to climate change. Warming causes the waters of the Mediterranean Sea to expand and its level to rise, eroding shorelines and contributing to flooding, according to the United Nations. Low-lying coastal areas, where much of Libya’s population lives, are at particular risk.
Ruba Hatem Yassine, a 24-year-old resident of Derna, recounted the moments on Monday when the flood tore through her city’s streets. She, her elderly relatives and her pregnant sister clambered from rooftop to rooftop along their narrow street. Eventually, they sought shelter in a small storage unit on a rooftop and watched the water overwhelm the city.
From there, she could hear people screaming, “Save us, save us,” as they were trapped in their homes by rising water or under rubble, she said on Wednesday morning by phone from a friend’s home in the nearby town of Marj.
After the flood subsided somewhat, survivors helped Ms. Yassine’s family of nine come down from the roof to safety. The group walked barefoot through knee-deep water until it reached a safer area, she said, leaving behind everything, including clothes, money and passports.
“We walked out barefoot and saw our friends and neighbors dying around us. And we couldn’t do anything,” Ms. Yassine said.
The Libyan Red Crescent, a nonprofit aid group whose volunteers have helped evacuate residents and which is leading the search-and-rescue efforts, reported early Wednesday on Facebook that, for a third day, its volunteers were searching for some of the thousands still missing, combing fields, trails and riverbanks.
“No missing people have been found at this moment,” the group said.
The group published a document on Facebook listing the survivors from Derna. By Wednesday morning, it had grown to more than 300 names.
“The support is trickling in. We just need more of it,” said Dax Roque, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s country director for Libya. “The response in Libya for so long has been underfunded. There’s an urgent need for international help.”
He welcomed the United Nations’ announcement that it was allocating $10 million from its emergency response fund to help those affected by the floods.
By Wednesday, it was still unclear how much of the aid, from inside Libya and internationally, had arrived in the most affected areas.
Faris al-Tayeh, who is heading a network of volunteer relief workers, managed to reach Derna on Monday afternoon despite treacherous, torn-up roads packed with people fleeing, he said. The entire city had been split in two by the flooding, he said.
“To get from one side to the other, you need to travel around for over a hundred kilometers,” he said.
Mr. al-Tayeh is now organizing an aid convoy to Derna.
“We could never have imagined what we saw: corpses in the ocean, whole families wiped out, fathers and sons and brothers stacked on top of each other,” Mr. al-Tayeh said. “Whole buildings dragged into the water with their residents still inside.”
For years, Libya has been divided between an internationally recognized government in the western half based in Tripoli, the capital, and a separately administered region in the east. That includes Derna, where the main authority is the Libyan National Army.
Shipments of supplies, including body bags and medical equipment, left early Tuesday morning from Tripoli for Benghazi, the main city on the eastern side, the Tripoli government said. A convoy of doctors, nurses and other rescue volunteers had already arrived in Benghazi that morning.
Most needed, the Tripoli government said, was rescue workers and inspectors and others who specialize in floods.
“The infrastructure has been destroyed, which makes it very difficult for emergency medical workers to reach these areas,” said Basheer Omar, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Libya. He added that local authorities had to disable the electrical grid for fear that people would be electrocuted in the floods.
His organization has been sending supplies and technical support to the Libyan Red Crescent, including body bags and personal protective gear.
“These areas are totally disconnected. There are no phones, no food, no electricity. So the situation is really dire in these areas,” he said. “It’s beyond the capacity of the authorities in Libya, so Libya needs the support of the international community.”
Vivian Nereim and Isabella Kwai contributed reporting.
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