The tragedy of lost life in Libya is overwhelming, more than 10,000 known dead and 10,000 missing, as a result of the mid-latitude storm “Daniel”, which on September 10-13 dumped 10 cm (@ 4 inches) of rain on the northeastern coast, (Cyrenaica district) of that nation. This region is essentially a desert where only a little more than about ten inches of rain falls annually. The topography of the region is that of a deeply dissected plateau. Deep ravines cut through this plateau with a main gorge leading directly to the City of Derna in northwestern Libya. It was the flooding of the deep narrow gorge of the Derna River and the failure of two dams along its course that caused a flood which struck City of Derna where the most loss of life occurred. The tragic loss of life is the result of a modest if unusual storm, the nature of the geology of the area, and human failure to maintain essential infrastructure. The more remote but underlying cause is the past military adventurism and greed of several advanced western states which intervened in Libya’s internal affairs, encouraged a wider civil war and a change of leadership leaving behind a failed state in economic chaos that remains dysfunctional to the present time.
The geology. In the last 50-60 million years Africa and Eurasia have been pressed together in a “continent to continent” convergent boundary where two continental plates collide. The compression zone is one of the most active on Earth. Geologists have calculated that Eurasia is moving south into Africa at a rate of about 37 mm per year. Many other similar convergent boundaries move at only 10-15 mm per year.
The headland where Derna is located has been under compression from Eurasia which may have begun some 60 million years ago and which continues today. These earth forces have pushed up the rocks of north-eastern Libya into a raised plateau, approximately 1,000 feet (@ 330m) above sea level. Such elevated lands are typically eroded and dissected by rain water…even in desert or desert like areas.
Over millions of years rainfall has eroded this upland, underlain with relatively soft sedimentary marine rocks into a deeply eroded dendritic pattern of gullies, canyons and deep gorges. From above, the ragged landscape looks much like a miniature Arizona. The Derna River gorge which flows intermittently is a dendritic (root like) rivers system carved into these raised sedimentary rocks. The main branch of this system —the Derna River—was dammed in the last century. The Ghadaffi Regime built two earthen dams along the course of the River, one about seven miles south of the City and another at about one-half mile from the City. The dams served to help recharge rainwater into subsurface aquifers and provide potable water and irrigation water for the City of Derna on the coast with a population @ 100,000 inhabitants.
In these desert-like terranes, rainfall is infrequent and most often result from scattered—air mass type—showers. Such storms produce rainfall of about ten inches annually in northeastern Libya (Benghazi). Cyclonic storms are rare in this area. When Daniel dropped nearly 4 inches of rain over a period of 24 to 48 hours in the area south of the City of Derna, runoff rain-water falling over a wide areas of earth surface below the storm clouds rapidly drained into the natural erosional system of narrow gullies and canyons where water flow increased rapidly. The narrow channels of these drainages caused rapid filling and increased flow rates. This effect intensified as the water was directed into formerly dry stream beds where its volume and flow rate rapidly increased. As this water picks up and carries away clay silt mud and gravel, its density increases along with its ability to pick up and carry the earth and debris in its path. This growing “water/mud tsunami” first struck the most southerly (7 mile) dam, which must have held the wall of water and mud only briefly, then as volume built up behind it, the dam collapsed and the mass of water, mud, rock and dam structure surged downstream. The now massive torrent carrying, mud, rocks, torn up trees, concrete parts of the dam, and human structures continued north along the Derna River gorge where slammed into the northerly dam only a bit more than a half mile from the City. there with a wall of water some calculate as 30 million cubic meters of water mud and debris, this massive biblical-like torrent exploded onto on the City of Derna, spreading out, along the main road as it picked up homes, cars, buildings, mosques and trapped human occupants. The wall of water carrying and uprooting all before it as it spread across the urbanized coastal plain and debouched into the Mediterranean.
The causes appear to be the result of natural topography, poor warning systems, lack of disaster planing and lack of maintenance of infrastructure. But the recent history of the Libya has also played a part. Thanks to the the policy of the US Bush and Obama administrations and their allies in the UK and France, Libya is today a failed state. Those dams were not serviced or repaired since the end of the Gadaffi Regime in 2011. Failed states struggle just to survive. Infrastructure such as roads, dams, utility services are ignored as are effective plans for emergencies. .
Libya has the third largest proven petroleum resources in the world after Saudi Arabia, and Russia. Though today as a failed state it produces a little—just over one million bbl per day. In the past western powers found the long time Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi a big pain in their neck. He would not open his petroleum and mineral reserves to western exploitation, hoping to retain control over them for the welfare of Libya. For that reason, and for the fear that he would side with Soviets, during the Cold War, he was targeted for assassination over and over from as far back as the Eisenhower Administration. He survived many attempts on his life, until 2011 when general uprisings of the Arab Spring spread across the Middle East and North Africa. Many claim this wide spread insurgence was in part a result of the dislocations and disasters wrought by the George Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria.
When Arab Spring demonstrations occurred in Libya, the Obama Administration, under war monger Hillary Clinton and others in the State Department, saw this as an opportunity to rid themselves of Gadaffi and his entourage. They supported the insurgents with money and guns, and watched from Washington, DC as Gadaffi was brutally killed by a mob and his administration ended. The results of their adventurism and intrusion into the affairs of other states brought nothing good for Libyans, only chaos, destruction, division of the nation into warring factions and unending war that has resulted in stalemate and a divided failed nation.
This last natural meteorological tragedy in Libya, the proximate result of topography and failure to repair and maintain infrastructure is also in good part, one of the end results of the unwise destructive “democratization” and intervention polices engaged in by western powers into the affairs of third world nations.
We have not learned our lessons after all the failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. We are still today involved in a deadly dangerous war in Ukraine, which can lead to nothing other than another divided, weakened and failed state. Our policies kill and maim innocent people…
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