A year on, Libya flood survivors grieve for their dead

DERNA, Libya (Reuters) – The flood that crashed through the Libyan town of Derna a year ago killed Hassan Kassar’s four children and left him homeless in a wrecked city, where reconstruction has been delayed by the political rifts dividing the country as a whole.

Kassar, 69, was in Egypt shopping for his daughter’s wedding when torrential rainfall overwhelmed two old, poorly maintained dams, sending a wall of water through the city and washing a swathe of it into the sea.

“It was a black day. A tragic day,” he said, recounting the moment when he returned to the city to find his home gone, tents set up all around, and neighbours telling him his children were missing.

The flood struck Derna in the middle of the night, survivors recalling a sound like a bomb and a sudden inrush of water that rose several storeys high and smashed aside buildings along the waterway that ran through the city centre.

Some people managed to escape across rooftops or trod water inside their bedrooms as the water level rose near the ceiling, but at least 5,000 died and thousands more remain unaccounted for.

Bodies, cars, furniture, toys and clothes were washing up along the shore for days afterwards and much of the city lay deep in mud carried down from the hills above.

Large piles of mud and rubble studded with twisted debris still lie in parts of the city.

“We discovered that half of the house was destroyed and covered in dust. We got workers and started to clean the place, but we didn’t find anything left, only found a small amount of money. The rest was taken by the flood,” Kassar said.

He wept as he scrolled through pictures on his phone looking at portraits of his sons.

Libya has not had stable government since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ended Muammar Gaddafi’s four-decade rule and it split in 2014 between warring eastern and western factions.

Political divisions, rampant corruption and regional rivalries have contributed to the decay of many state functions – often including the proper maintenance of national infrastructure.

U.N. efforts to bring rival western and eastern authorities together for a coordinated effort to revive Derna have failed to overcome years of distrust.

However, Kassar’s home was eventually rebuilt as eastern authorities began major reconstruction works. “Thank God I am now living comfortably,” he said, sitting in the port with a cigarette, fresh white concrete buildings standing nearby.

(Reporting by Reuters Libya newsroom; writing by Angus McDowall; editing by Alexandra Hudson)