In a city that was famous for its Mediterranean promenade, its fishermen and its seafood restaurants that faced the cerulean waves, people have grown to fear the sea.
Nobody knows how many bodies were dragged away in the flood that left much of Derna, Libya, in mud-choked ruins a year ago, after a powerful storm caused two aging dams to burst in the mountains above the city. The official death toll is about 4,000, but thousands more remain missing, according to residents and the Libyan authorities, an agonizing number that underscores the dysfunction that residents and analysts say contributed to the disaster and hampered the emergency response.
“Fishing was my favorite hobby,” said Mostafa Saied, 54. “Now I avoid the sea and everything to do with it. There’s a lot of dead bodies in there. I imagine them getting eaten by fish, and I can’t eat it anymore.”
The waters tore his wife, their three daughters and one of their two sons from the rooftop where they were sheltering. He survived only because, running down a stairwell to help a neighbor, he was shielded in the building from the wave. He never found his family’s bodies. His best hope is that workers will find something as they rehabilitate the neighborhood.
All over central Derna, the air rings with hammering and hums with the sounds of heavy equipment as workers in orange vests rebuild the shattered city.
The floodwaters crashed into the valley that runs through Derna last September, destroying the three bridges connecting the city’s east and west, and wrecking buildings on both sides. The authorities barred many foreign journalists from coming to report on the flood’s aftermath last year. For the anniversary, however, they invited The New York Times and other news organizations to witness the reconstruction effort.
Now the bones of three new bridges rise from the dusty valley floor, the most visible fruits of a fast-paced, $2.1-billion reconstruction effort financed by one of Libya’s two rival government administrations, and overseen by a warlord’s son. The restoration work has brought a measure of optimism to Derna, even as it threatens to harden Libya’s intractable political divides and further entrench corruption.
Much of the recovery is still tentative. Shops and cafes are reopening, but many rely on generators during frequent power failures. Some of the more than 40,000 people displaced by the floods are back in their old homes, preferring to return — even disconnected from the city’s sewage system — rather than pay rent or squeeze in with relatives.
But the speed of rebuilding is now such that residents have grown used to seeing fireworks sparkling over the city at night, announcing the opening of a rebuilt school or new medical clinic.
Residents interviewed in Derna expressed excitement, sometimes verging on amazement, at the head-spinning pace of renewal, especially after decades of little development in the city.
Yet they cannot quite forget that they are living in a graveyard.
“When it comes to the buildings, it’ll be much better than before,” said Najma Mohamed, 49, who was sitting in a tidy new park with her two daughters on Monday evening. The city’s historic downtown, along with the seaside promenade where she used to enjoy the breeze at sunset, were destroyed in the flood.
“But we’ll always miss the old part, and the families we lost,” she said. Her brother and his family died in the flood.
From one of the new bridges hangs a giant banner showing Gen. Khalifa Hifter, the warlord who controls eastern Libya and leads the self-styled Libyan National Army — a reminder of whom Derna’s residents are meant to credit for the city’s recovery.
Racked by war and political chaos since rebels overthrew its longtime dictator in 2011, Libya has been divided for years between the two administrations, one west, one east. Mr. Hifter is one of the most powerful figures among many officials who, analysts and diplomats say, have avoided elections because they are unwilling to give up either power or access to Libya’s vast oil wealth.
One of Mr. Hifter’s sons, Belgacem Hifter, leads the flood zone’s official reconstruction fund, whose blue signs have become ubiquitous around Derna. Political analysts and rights groups say it is doling out lucrative contracts with almost no oversight or transparency.
Critics say the reconstruction effort risks recreating the corruption that most likely played a role in the deterioration of the dams that burst. Though 12 unnamed officials were convicted in July for their roles in the dams’ neglect, high-ranking officials were never prosecuted, leading to accusations that Libyan leaders had dodged true accountability.
“We’re watching history repeat itself,” said Anas El-Gomati, who heads the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan research center. “The same lack of oversight that allowed maintenance funds to vanish, leaving the dams vulnerable, is now potentially funneling reconstruction money into a maze of suspect deals.”
The reconstruction fund said in a statement that it was willing to cooperate with bodies including the United Nations on financial reviews and oversight. It said it was awarding contracts to local companies, not only foreign contractors, in part to build up their experience.
The recovery efforts have drawn praise from many residents for Belgacem Hifter, who they say is personally driving the projects forward.
For survivors, the rebuilding is welcome. But they struggle with the choice to return to neighborhoods lying half in ruins, with sewage pooling in the streets and mounds of twisted rebar, tree trunks and trash where stores and houses used to be.
Abdelnasser Alzergi, 52, returned home to a building overlooking the valley three months ago to escape rising rents.
“Every day I still remember my neighbors, their faces and features, and how we used to talk to each other,” he said. “Many of my neighbors were screaming for help, and I couldn’t help them.”
He knows the tragedies of the street by heart: The family of a deaf-mute man, drowned in their beds. The family who had only one tiny daughter survive, now living with her uncle. The family who had only one son survive, now living alone in the apartment. The family swept away except for two daughters, who now live in the house alone, apparently in the grip of psychological breakdowns. An uncle comes to leave them food.
In Mr. Alzergi’s mind, it seems like yesterday that the first rush of water stampeded through the first and second floors.
People raced to the rooftops. With the power knocked out, the only light came from people’s cellphones, he recalled.
Around 3 a.m., the second wave came, and those lights were snuffed out, too.
Then it was total darkness but for the occasional streak of lightning. Flash by flash, he saw people, cars and chunks of buildings swept forward by the water. Mr. Alzergi and two other neighbors knocked a hole in the wall surrounding their rooftop and started pulling people through it. Altogether, he said, they rescued 59 people from the waters.
But one person they did not save haunts him: a woman who managed to hand them her young twin boys but could not fit through herself. She begged them to take the boys and leave her. Then she was swept away.
From 3 to 5 a.m., the survivors on the rooftop prayed, watching the water rise. After it receded and dawn broke, they saw bodies dotting a wasteland of mud and whole blocks erased. The valley was full of water, the bridges gone.
These scenes play in the survivors’ nightmares, and make it impossible for Mostafa Saied, whose wife, daughters and son died in the flood, to live in his old apartment again, he said.
Yet he keeps returning to look at it every few days, this place where he was born and lived with his family.
“If I start living here again and remember my wife and daughters, it’ll be really hard for me,” he said. “But, I can’t explain it, but I keep coming back here.”
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