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EXPERTS HAVE WARNED about the structural integrity of the twin dams in Derna for years, a Libyan state prosecutor revealed.
Concerns have been raised since 1986 when the dams suffered major damage in the wake of a wild storm.
Libya’s general prosecutor al-Sediq al-Sour said that more than a decade later, a study was commissioned by the Libyan government that revealed cracks and fissures in the dam structures.
Turkish firm Arsel Construction Company was also contracted in 2007 to maintain the two dams and to build a third damn in between them.
The firm’s website claims the works were completed in November 2012 but, according to recent satellite photos, no third dam was built.
Arsel did not respond to an email seeking further comment on the two dams.
In 2012 and 2013, 2 million dollars was set aside to maintain the twin dams.
But, according to a report by a state-run audit agency in 2021, the two dams were never maintained.
The audit agency has since blamed the Ministry of Works and Natural Resources for failing to cancel the contract and give it to a company that would do the work.
Mr Al-Sediq al-Sour said in a press conference on Friday that prosecutors would investigate the collapse of the two dams and the allocation of maintenance funds.
He said: “I reassure citizens that whoever made mistakes or negligence, prosecutors will certainly take firm measures, file a criminal case against him and send him to trial.”
After decades of neglect and heavy rains caused by Storm Daniel, the two dams in Derna were overwhelmed on September 12.
A wall of water razed the city, killing at least 11,000 people and destroying entire neighbourhoods in the process.
The Libyan Red Crescent says more than 10,000 people are still missing.
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Experts warned about the dangers of storing tonnes of ammonium nitrate in Beirut also that erupted in 2020 causing one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history that damaged over half the city. Same with the New Orleans flood damage after Hurricane Katrina. Everyone knows these things are an inevitability over time. Nobody does anything. Experts are ignored, funds are mismanaged. Thousands die unnecessarily. Regrettably it’s the same old story repeating throughout history.
@Harry Whelks: well said and true !
@Harry Whelks: worst case of whataboutry ever seen or heard
Libya bombed back to the Stone Age during NATO reign of terror in 2011 hard to believe the dams escaped the onslaught
@SF Means Sh!t 4 Free: Shhh, you can’t be letting facts get in the way of a Journal Commenter now.
@SF Means Sh!t 4 Free: The full sentence reads: “NATO air strikes killed at least 72 civilians, one-third of them children under age 18.” This refers to US and UK air attacks on Libya’s infrastructure only. The ground campaign and the killings from it are not recorded. Neither is the destruction of the civil infrastructure and the social administration which was destroyed.
@SF Means Sh!t 4 Free: I know several engineers who were involved in construction of the named dams and the massive irrigation system set up by the Libyan government they were able to identify the catastrophic destruction of the system by NATO its was a war crime and every death in this current flooding crisis rests with NATO leadership
Obama, Hillary, and Samantha Power are responsible for this.
@Blessing Atuegwu: read the article. The problem was evident for decades, long before the civil conflict. Firms were contracted to carry out maintenance, but didn’t. Reading between the lines, brown envelopes.
Is Russell Brand the new Jimmy Saville or has he just pissed off the establishment?
@: ‘pissed off the establishment’ LOL
@Tom Dillon: looks like he did something to a friend of Murdoch anyway
@: ‘An elite’ but not part of ‘the establishment’. He has changed religion as needed. He has changed his support to the political party that best serves his interests. He has changed citizenship to serve his business interests. He appears to have changed wives to suit his personal interests. Years ago, he saw the British establishment as something f to be despised. He’s made a career of taking on establishment incumbents (British press, British television) – where, remember, everyone said satellite and pay TV would never work – and in the US where the TV establishment used to laugh as he set about building a fourth national network.
@Tom Dillon: are you on about brand or murdoch?
@:
Fake news ! The article calls him a “comedian”
Don’t make me laugh
The rainfall in the catchment was 400mm in a short time period. The catchment is a plateau with the main wadi extending 50 km upstream from the coast. This landscape type is well know for flash flood, which arrives as a wall of debris being pushed ahead of a flood many meters high.
The dams are shown on Google Map Satellite view. The dams are small and the spillways (overflow structures) look equally small.
Probably the upper dam was overtopped and washed out. The surge carried all before it including the lower dam.
@Antony Stack: the entire water and irrigation system were targeted and destroyed by NATO a war crime
When gaddafi was in charge he had the biggest irrigation project being built and those dams would not have burst if he was still there but we know who decided to take him out with more lies
My God, the scenes online of dams breaking and the surge is so overwhelming. Terrible tragedy
Get the Irish government on it! Nothing a few speed vans wouldn’t fix I’d say!
@Journal Commenter: and more carbon tax
@Thomas Sheridan: Carbon tax … For the average household (consuming 11,000 kWh of gas per annum), that’s an extra €92.51 a year, or €7.71 a month (including VAT). Bugger all.
The €23 million of our money is a drop in the ocean to the corrupt regime in Kiev. Zelensky sacked all his recruiting officials for bribe taking. It seems for $5,000 dollars Ukrainian men of military age can escape the country and this has been going since the start of the round-up of men for the meat-grinder. Today’s report that a reverend gentleman of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church took $4,500 from each of six men to disguise them with false papers to escape the conscription.
Our €23 million handed over by FF’s Mícheál Martin will win some votes in FG territory but not in the tax-paying regions of the country.
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