'An unimaginable scene': Survivors describe Libya floods

[Social Media]

 

The first sign that something was wrong was the sound of the dogs barking.

It was 2.30am and dark outside. When Husam Abdelgawi, a 31-year-old accountant in the eastern Libyan city of Derna, got up and went sleepily downstairs to check on them, he felt water under his feet.

Husam opened the front door of the house he shared with his younger brother, Ibrahim. More water flooded in, pulling the door off of its hinges.

The brothers ran to the back door, where they were met by a "ghastly, unimaginable scene, worse than death itself to witness", Husam said, in a phone interview from the city of Al-Qubbah.

"The bodies of women and children were floating past us. Cars and entire houses were caught up in the current. Some of the bodies were swept by the water into our house."

The water swept Husam and Ibrahim up too, carrying them farther and faster than they imagined possible. Within seconds, they were 150m apart.

 

Ibrahim, 28, managed to grab on to floating power cables still tethered to their poles and grapple himself back towards where Husam was stuck. The brothers used the cables like ropes to pull themselves towards a nearby building and through a third-floor window, and from there they made it to a fifth-floor rooftop where they could wait out the flood.

"The area where we were was a higher part of the city," Husam said. "In the lower parts, I don't think anyone on the fifth or sixth floors has survived. I think they are all dead. May God have mercy on their souls."

 

 

FULL STORY

 

[Tug]

Oh god……………..sad 

[thaibeachlovers]

I've been following it on Al Jazeera and the response has been lacking.

According to google, Saudi Arabia has only sent two plane loads of supplies. Why no military men to assist?

Even Egypt has done more.

 

Very sad news that apparently a bus load of Greek helpers was in an accident with dead and injured.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/libya-says-four-members-greek-rescue-team-killed-road-accident-2023-09-17/

Four members of a Greek rescue team en route to the flood-ravaged city of Derna and three members of a Libyan family were killed in a road accident on Sunday, the health minister for the Libyan eastern government said.

Edited September 18, 2023 by thaibeachlovers