Flooding in Northern Libya has killed an estimated 5,000 people, government officials said Wednesday. As 10,000 more are missing, this number could still rise. The devastating disaster – caused by downpours of storm Daniel that burst dams near the coastal city of Derna Sunday night – is already one of the deadliest floods of the past 30 years. This is according to data by Munich Re, Swiss Re and Aon.
As seen in the numbers, the extreme forces unleashed by tsunamis have caused some of the most deadly floods of the past decades, like in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which killed around 220,000 and more than 18,000 people, respectively. Tropical cyclones hitting underdeveloped and underprepared countries like Myanmar, Bangladesh, India, the Philippines and Honduras have also seen very high death tolls in the past.
Nations that lack the resources and political stability to adequately prepare for natural disasters still bear the brunt of their consequences. Libyan policy researchers interviewed by The New York Times said that there seem to have been no dam monitoring or evacuation orders despite storm Daniel’s known path. Additionally, the weak Libyan state which is stuck in perpetual post-civil war conditions is complicating aid efforts and their coordination.
As tsunami detection and disaster preparedness have improved over the decades, fewer people have actually died in flooding – one of the biggest killers among natural disasters historically. In between 1970 and 1975, three flood and storm events in Bangladesh, China and Vietnam killed around 630,000 people in total. In 1887, 1931 and 1939, major river floods in China still killed in between and estimated 500,000 and 4 million people each.
The biggest flood disaster of recent times, the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004, was as brutal as it was due to the lack of detection systems, as the ocean experiences fewer tsunamis than the Pacific. An initiative to set up one in the Western part of heavily affected Indonesia has since failed. India, however, set up its own system successfully after the catastrophe.
In 2013, an extreme downpour in Northern India caused deadly floods and landslides. The event’s tragically high death toll is in connection with a Hindu pilgrimage taking place at the time in the area. Venezuela in 1999 experienced a similar event in a geographically prone area where many homes were swept out to the ocean.
