Yale University researchers said in a report last Thursday that Storm Daniel that hit eastern Libya, and Derna city the hardest, had been Africa’s deadliest storm in recorded history.
The researchers said the storm struck eastern Libya on Sunday and Monday, leaving thousands dead and an already struggling society faced with a mammoth recovery effort.
“Storm Daniel’s preliminary death toll of 5,300 in Libya as of Wednesday morning surpasses the 1927 floods in Algeria (3,000 killed) as the deadliest storm in Africa since 1900, according to statistics from EM-DAT, the international disaster database. Storm Daniel is also the deadliest storm globally since at least 2013 when Super Typhoon Haiyan killed 7,354 people in the Philippines.” The report said.
It added that the worst flooding from Storm Daniel was in the port city of Derna (population 90,000), where the failures of the nearby Derna and Abu Mansur dams, both about 50 years old, allowed a wall of water to rip through the heart of town along the Wadi Derna, which is a dry riverbed during much of the year. Carving a path some 100 meters (320 feet) wide, the floodwaters inundated some buildings and caused others to collapse.
Large parts of Derna city remain inaccessible, making it difficult to determine the full impact of the flooding. The government appointed by the House of Representatives announced that at least 5,300 deaths had been recorded so far. The Red Crescent also estimated that there were more than 10,000 missing people in Derna.
“The torrents that caused the Libya floods were delivered by Storm Daniel, a medicane (shorthand for Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone) that moved southward into Libya as an unusually well-formed system, with gale-force winds reported northwest of its center. It is already clear that Daniel will be by far the deadliest and costliest medicane ever recorded.” Yale researchers said.
