“What happened is heartbreaking,” a member of the National Safety Authority in Derna recalls the details of September 10, when Storm Daniel struck the city, causing widespread destruction.
At seven in the evening, the rain began to fall somewhat lightly, and Safety Authority patrols began roaming the streets to ensure the stability of the situation, as Authority member Fathi Amgheib Al-Kuraimi narrates.
The morale was high among Al-Kuraimi and his colleagues, who drove their cars around the downtown areas, passing through its vital streets, including Al-Sahaba Mosque Street, and were reassured that the situation was stable.
Start receiving distress calls
But the calm did not last long. Only a few hours passed until heavy rain began to fall as a result of the advance of Hurricane Daniel, and the water level rose alarmingly, and the Authority began receiving many calls for help from people calling on them to take action to save them.
Indeed, Al-Kuraimi moved with other members of the authority to rescue the stranded people, and they were forced to use fire engines in the rescue operation due to the high water levels.
Soldiers of the 166th Battalion
Then Al-Karimi received a signal on the radio that there were soldiers from the 166th Battalion of the Libyan army, stranded in the port of Derna. They quickly went to them and invited them to leave with them, but the soldiers insisted on remaining in their position, and said that they would “mount the roof of the building if the water level rose more.” So”.
The group returned with the fire truck again to their location, before they received another report to deal with, and they actually moved at two in the morning to respond to the report.
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Loss of control
However, the water level reached such a point that they lost control of their car, which became like a “raft in the water,” and inside it, in addition to Al-Karimi, were four other Authority employees.
Here, Al-Kuraimi received a call from a member of the authority to inquire about their situation. He told him what had happened and that they had become among the “perished,” because the torrent was pushing the car towards the sea. So he told them to use the “anti-slip” on the fire engine to restrain its movement, but as a rescue team they were not Familiar with how the car works precisely.
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Heroic act
Al-Kuraimi tells how their colleague insisted on moving to rescue them, and went with another to their location, and as fate would have it, the rear tire of the fire engine got stuck on the sidewalk, which prevented it from rushing into the sea with the torrent.
Their colleague jumped into the fire truck and was able to stop it, but the other car he came in broke down in the middle of the street, which “turned into the sea.”
But after great efforts, members of the Authority were able to remove the two cars and headed to the headquarters, and there was no longer any ability to provide assistance to those stranded in the city.
The floods pushed dozens of cars into the Derna port basin, and the total number of destroyed buildings in Derna reached about 900, most of them in the city center area. As for the victims, the spokesman for the Libyan National Army, Ahmed Al-Mismari, indicates that they exceeded 3,400 deaths.
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2023-09-22 06:17:57