Liz Stephens, Professor in Climate Risks and Resilience at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, told CNN that there were serious questions to be asked about the design standard of the dam and whether the risk of very extreme rainfall events had been adequately taken into account. Residents of the area should be made aware of the dangers of flooding, it added. “Because in the event of a huge flood, the result will be catastrophic on the residents of the valley and the city.” It also found that the surrounding area lacked adequate vegetation that could prevent soil erosion. “The current situation in the Wadi Derna reservoir requires officials to take immediate measures to carry out periodic maintenance of existing dams,” the paper recommended last year. The Sebha University paper warned that the dams in Derna had a “high potential for flood risk” and that periodic maintenance is needed to avoid “catastrophic” flooding. Those dams haven’t undergone maintenance since 2002, the city’s deputy mayor Ahmed Madroud told Al Jazeera.īut the problems with the dams were known. The second dam, Mansour, is 45 meters (148 feet) high with a capacity of 1.5 million cubic meters (396 million gallons). The Derna dam is 75 meters (246 feet) high with a storage capacity of 18 million cubic meters (4.76 billion gallons). The two dams that burst on Monday were built around half a century ago, between 19, by a Yugoslav construction company. Storms “are becoming more ferocious because of climate change,” said Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading in the UK.ĭerna is prone to flooding, and its dam reservoirs have caused at least five deadly floods since 1942, the latest of which was in 2011, according to a research paper published by Libya’s Sebha University last year. Warmer oceans provide fuel for storms to grow, and a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, meaning more extreme rainfall. While it’s too early to definitively attribute the storm to the climate crisis, scientists are confident that climate change is increasing the intensity of extreme weather events like storms. In photos: Catastrophic flooding devastates eastern Libya
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