Libya floods: retrieving the dead in devastated Derna as big a challenge as finding the living
- Libya’s flood-ravaged Derna risks becoming a massive contamination site from decomposing corpses
- Lacking enough body bags, the coastal city has begun burying its dead, mostly in mass graves
The corpses are everywhere. Buried under mud-filled husks of ruined homes. Wedged among smashed bridges and roadways. Drifting by the dozens – perhaps hundreds, even thousands – in the detritus-filled sea.
In the days after a powerful storm lashed Libya’s coastline and floodwaters from two burst dams swept part of the city of Derna into the sea, authorities have understandably focused on the living, racing to find and evacuate survivors.
But they also must contend with the dead, to collect and bury the growing number of victims before their bodies turn Derna into a massive contamination site.
“This is the fourth day after the flooding. The corpses will start to decompose,” Ahmed Zouiten, the World Health Organization’s representative in Libya, said on Thursday. “This will be an environmental catastrophe.”
Estimates of the death toll have varied widely, and large numbers of Derna residents have lost their homes and belongings.
