‘Dam of death’: How a Libyan city was washed away
This Is Why
Sky News
4.0 • 552 Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2023
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More than 11,300 people are known to have died - and this could reach up to 20,000, with a further 10,100 missing.
Meanwhile, attempts to coordinate humanitarian aid have been hampered by Libya's fractured government - caused by years of political instability and civil unrest.
Today on Sky News Daily, Niall Paterson speaks with Sky News Africa correspondent Yousra Elbagir from the port city of Derna, which was devastated when two dams collapsed, unleashing a tsunami that washed entire city blocks into the Mediterranean Sea.
Sky News special correspondent Alex Crawford also joins Niall from Derna, as rescue teams scramble to find survivors in the rubble.
This podcast contains graphic descriptions.
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Podcast Producer: Soila Apparicio
Promotions Producer: David Chipakupaku
Editor: Adam Jay
Transcript
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| 1:05.2 | Days before the deluge smashed through the Libyan city of Derna, a local poet attended a meeting with officials to discuss the possibility of floods and the state of the nearby dams which were supposed to provide protection. He wrote these words afterwards. |
| 1:21.6 | The rain exposes the drenched streets, the cheating contractor and the failed states. |
| 1:28.8 | It washes everything. |
| 1:30.6 | Bird's wings and cat's fur reminds the poor of their fragile roofs and ragged clothes. |
| 1:36.7 | It awakens the valleys, shakes off their yawning dust and dry crusts. |
| 1:42.1 | The rain. |
| 1:43.2 | A sign of goodness, a promise of help, an alarm bell. |
| 1:47.0 | Like thousands of others, on Sunday, the poet Mustafa Al-Trabelsi died in the floods that his words had predicted. |
| 1:57.0 | His poem is now being shared across Libya as people there begin to grapple with the scale of the loss and the apparent culpability of those in charge. |
| 2:05.7 | I'm Neil Patterson, and in this edition of the Daily, we take you to what remains of Darnah. |
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