TRIPOLI, LIBYA – The flood that devastated Libya’s eastern port city of Derna last year has impacted up to 1.5 million people and will require $1.8 billion for reconstruction, according to a new report.
On September 10, Storm Daniel hit the east coast of Libya, causing floods that collapsed two dams in Derna and released a deluge of water that razed entire neighborhoods.
“The disaster impacted approximately 1.5 million people — 22 per cent of Libya’s population — living in the coastal and inland cities that were hardest hit,” reads the joint report by the European Union, United Nations and World Bank.
Nearly 44,800 people were displaced by the disaster, including 16,000 children, and their access to care and education has severely deteriorated since.
Around 250,000 people still required humanitarian aid in December.
UN humanitarian agency OCHA has confirmed 4,352 deaths and more than 8,000 missing persons, “making Storm Daniel the deadliest storm in Africa since 1900”, reads the report published by the United Nations Support Mission in Libya.
On Wednesday, Libya’s governmental authority for the missing said it had received 5,000 more DNA samples for identification from bodies recovered among the rubble, sea or buried in mass graves around Derna.
According to the report, 20 municipalities were affected by Storm Daniel and will require an estimated $1.8 billion over three years for reconstruction and recovery.
The housing sector was hit the hardest, with around 18,500 homes destroyed or damaged, the equivalent of 7 percent of housing, reads the report.
The floods also had a major impact on the transport and water sectors, as well as on the country’s cultural heritage, according to the experts.
In addition to the reconstruction needs, the report estimated the material damage and economic losses, including of businesses and farms, at $1.65 billion, or 3.6 percent of Libya’s GDP in 2022.
Libya has been battered by armed conflict and political chaos since a NATO-backed uprising led to the toppling of dictator Moamer Kadhafi in 2011.
The North African country is now divided between an internationally recognized Tripoli-based government led by interim Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah in the west and an administration in the east backed by military strongman Khalifa Haftar.