5 ms·

Dire warnings about Libya dams went unheeded

34 points by dredmorbius 3y ago

sshine 3y ago
https://archive.vn/gk9PP https://archive.vn/gk9PP
h2odragon 3y ago
Sounds similar to the story about the explosives in Beirut harbor. Various parties had been yelling about the huge pile of Ammonium Nitrate in a warehouse for several years before it went off. I have this impression that the area has not been well governed (for more than a few years a t a time) for millennia; because people in other areas of the world find it convenient that it not be. Living in the crossroads of the world means you get stepped over by everyone i reckon.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  Quite. I'd posted my own semi-informed assessment / speculation about the Derna dam failures in a thread yesterday, including the Beirut ammonia nitrate explosion as one of several similar incidents. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523055> The NY Times piece largely corresponds to what I'd written, filling in numerous details, e.g.: In 1986, a major storm convulsed the region, damaging the dams and shearing soil from the ground. The structures were damaged, Dr. Ashoor said, but again they held. Despite the stresses, repairs were minimal. In 1998, the Libyan government commissioned a study that revealed cracks and fissures in the dams, said Attorney General Sadiq al-Soor. Nearly 10 years later, a Turkish company was finally contracted to repair the dams, the prosecutor added. But the government dragged its feet in paying, and the project got underway only in 2010... Just four months later, in 2011, Libyans marched against Colonel el-Qaddafi’s 42-year grip on power... In the tumult, work on the dam ceased... So, significant damage was incurred thirty-seven years ago, a study was commissioned over a decade later, work didn't commence for another thirteen years, and stopped shortly after, 12 years ago. Meantime, climate has been degrading, affecting both precipitation patterns and geology which amplifies impacts of storms. Technical debt accumulates. And both autocratic and failing states respond poorly to long-term, slowly-evolving risk. As far as who's to blame, I'd suggest that another take is to look around to see what other locations might have similarly-accumulating risks. There's been strong contrast made to disaster response in Libya vs. Morocco, despite some governmental dysfunction in the latter's case. Social cohesion and individual response in Morocco has been called out as specifically effective. Failing states, complex infrastructure, and latent risks devolving from those, seem to me likely elsewhere in North Africa, have already been evidenced in Pakistan (truly massive flooding in 2022), are a factor in Ukraine (another dam failure, this tied to military aggression by Russia). There's a very high-risk dam in Mosul, Iraq, which has made headlines for years. Sri Lanka's economic collapse earlier this year would suggest that infrastructure maintenance may be lapsing. Afghanistan has numerous dams and hydrological projects which are now under the control of the Taliban, who've not proven to be especially capable administrators. Syria is another region with ongoing conflict. I suspect there's considerable rotting infrastructure in Russia. China is a country that's seen absolutely incredible growth and development in the past two decades, though with highly questionable quality and inspections practices. As I'd noted in my earlier comment, even in wealthy, advanced, and reasonably institutionally-sound countries such as the US there've been numerous dam failures and near-failures over the past decade.
- slashdev 3y ago
  > I have this impression that the area has not been well governed (for more than a few years a t a time) for millennia; because people in other areas of the world find it convenient that it not be. That’s an odd take. They’re a mess largely because of internal factors , not external ones. They were a mess before external interventions. Not saying it helped, but it’s not wholly responsible for the conditions either.
  - salt-thrower 3y ago
    Not that odd of a take. It's difficult to have internal stability when you face externally-sourced "reorganizations" every generation or so.
    - azinman2 3y ago
      Internal stability helps prevent external forces.
      - salt-thrower 3y ago
        Plenty of internally stable nations have been toppled by imperialism. It's not really a good metric for how well you can "prevent external forces."
        slashdev 3y ago
        It helps a lot. Having a strong military with competitive technology and training is also very important. Having strong alliances is even more critical. Or in the modern era, having nukes. Which is why isolated dictatorship countries want them so badly.
        salt-thrower 3y ago
        As someone else already mentioned, this is especially ironic to bring up in the case of Libya because Libya gave up their nukes to appease Western powers. Then were invaded and toppled by those same powers later on.
- logicchains 3y ago
  Libya was quite well-governed before Gaddafi was ousted, the most developed country in the region.
- bell-cot 3y ago
  > I have this impression that the area has not been well governed (for more than a few years a t a time) for millennia; because... If you specify millenia, the truth is the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Prehistoric_and_Berber_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Prehistoric_a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Phoenician_and_Greek_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Phoenician_an... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Achaemenid_and_Ptolemaic_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Achaemenid_an... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Roman_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Roman_Libya But things mostly went to crap ~975 years ago, when the ruling Zirid dynasty picked the wrong side in the Abbasid/Fatimid conflict... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirid_dynasty#Apogee_in_Ifriqiya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirid_dynasty#Apogee_in_Ifriqi...
- closewith 3y ago
  Which area is that? Eastern Libya isn't exactly close to Lebanon.
26fingies 3y ago
Weird that when we destroy a government and replace it with nothing infrastructure goes unmaintained.
- meepmorp 3y ago
  The dams were unmaintained for years before the Qadaffi government fell.
  - bannedbybros 3y ago
    [dead]
  - scroblart 3y ago
    Even the nyt is willing to admit that work had begun on the dams before NATO started bombing, they feel obligated to let that tiny crack of truth in
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  In 1986, a major storm convulsed the region, damaging the dams and shearing soil from the ground. The structures were damaged, Dr. Ashoor said, but again they held. Despite the stresses, repairs were minimal. In 1998, the Libyan government commissioned a study that revealed cracks and fissures in the dams, said Attorney General Sadiq al-Soor. Nearly 10 years later, a Turkish company was finally contracted to repair the dams, the prosecutor added. But the government dragged its feet in paying, and the project got underway only in 2010... Just four months later, in 2011, Libyans marched against Colonel el-Qaddafi’s 42-year grip on power... In the tumult, work on the dam ceased... From TFA. Neglect has accrued over 37 years. Only 12 have elapsed since the fall of Qaddafi. NATO's direct involvement was for a brief period in 2011.
  - landemva 3y ago
    > NATO's direct involvement was for a brief period in 2011. And USA's direct involvement in Nagasaki Japan by dropping Little Boy was for a brief period on August 6 1945. https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/little-boy-and-fat-man https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/little-boy-and-fat...
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
dredmorbius 3y ago
An alternative take, labeled as a "non-imperial viewpoint", was given in a dead comment: <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/14/zlnn-s14.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/14/zlnn-s14.html>
- azinman2 3y ago
  > today are backing a NATO war against Russia in Ukraine The idea that there’s a war against Russia in another country that they invaded tells me all I need to know about how they write.
  - dredmorbius 3y ago
    I'm not sympathetic to the view. Thought I'd at least let it see daylight, however. Which is often a strong disinfectant.
    - azinman2 3y ago
      What are you disinfecting with a trash write up though?
      - dredmorbius 3y ago
        I'm the submitter of the NY Times piece here. The WSWS link was submitted by a banned account (I have "showdead" enabled so I see such comments). In the interests of fairness and to remove the claim that that viewpoint is being suppressed, I provided it myself in my own comment. I'm going to suggest that the HN readership should be sufficiently literate to compare the two pieces, the narratives, facts, and shadings presented, and if it chooses to do so, assess and/or identify slants, defects, or strengths of each piece. Which might be more productive than attacking someone who's already said that they don't endorse the piece.
      - everybodyknows 3y ago
        Trash writeups are the norm nowadays. Any effective knowledge acquisition now therefore depends upon finely-tuned comparative analysis of the opposed, competing trash streams.
aftbit 3y ago
If you watch lots of disaster documentaries, you'll realize that "warnings went unheeded" or even "problems were explicitly acknowledged in formal reports over several years but not actually resolved" are incredibly common fact patterns in structure collapse. Usually structures will give some signs of impending failure, but also repair or remediation is usually very expensive and disruptive, and there are thousands of crumbling structures that require it. Only in retrospect is it obvious where we should have concentrated our limited resources.
- WeylandYutani 3y ago
  There was a famous flooding in the Netherlands in 1953 that was basically predicted by engineers but the country was broke after WW2. I think Libya is the same? They just came out of a civil war.
  - thriftwy 3y ago
    They actually never "came" out of civil war. They're still a fractured failed state. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/libya-and-morocco-two-very-different-responses-to-catastrophe https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/libya-and-moro...
  - cool_dude85 3y ago
    Calling the situation in Libya a civil war is accurate but sort of elides the real situation. Libya has not recovered from the NATO regime change operation to remove Gaddafi from power. The civil war is the outcome of the regime change operation.
    - alephxyz 3y ago
      Except the civil war started a month and a half before NATO intervention
      - rlewczuk 3y ago
        [flagged]
thriftwy 3y ago
This is a mirror situation of a dam near Mosul in Iraq, about which everybody was saying it is going to collapse, but to date it did not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam
rich_sasha 3y ago
This one event may have caused more deaths globally than nuclear power plant accidents.

34 points by dredmorbius 3y ago

https://archive.vn/gk9PP https://archive.vn/gk9PP

Sounds similar to the story about the explosives in Beirut harbor. Various parties had been yelling about the huge pile of Ammonium Nitrate in a warehouse for several years before it went off. I have this impression that the area has not been well governed (for more than a few years a t a time) for millennia; because people in other areas of the world find it convenient that it not be. Living in the crossroads of the world means you get stepped over by everyone i reckon.

dredmorbius 3y ago
Quite. I'd posted my own semi-informed assessment / speculation about the Derna dam failures in a thread yesterday, including the Beirut ammonia nitrate explosion as one of several similar incidents. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523055 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37523055> The NY Times piece largely corresponds to what I'd written, filling in numerous details, e.g.: In 1986, a major storm convulsed the region, damaging the dams and shearing soil from the ground. The structures were damaged, Dr. Ashoor said, but again they held. Despite the stresses, repairs were minimal. In 1998, the Libyan government commissioned a study that revealed cracks and fissures in the dams, said Attorney General Sadiq al-Soor. Nearly 10 years later, a Turkish company was finally contracted to repair the dams, the prosecutor added. But the government dragged its feet in paying, and the project got underway only in 2010... Just four months later, in 2011, Libyans marched against Colonel el-Qaddafi’s 42-year grip on power... In the tumult, work on the dam ceased... So, significant damage was incurred thirty-seven years ago, a study was commissioned over a decade later, work didn't commence for another thirteen years, and stopped shortly after, 12 years ago. Meantime, climate has been degrading, affecting both precipitation patterns and geology which amplifies impacts of storms. Technical debt accumulates. And both autocratic and failing states respond poorly to long-term, slowly-evolving risk. As far as who's to blame, I'd suggest that another take is to look around to see what other locations might have similarly-accumulating risks. There's been strong contrast made to disaster response in Libya vs. Morocco, despite some governmental dysfunction in the latter's case. Social cohesion and individual response in Morocco has been called out as specifically effective. Failing states, complex infrastructure, and latent risks devolving from those, seem to me likely elsewhere in North Africa, have already been evidenced in Pakistan (truly massive flooding in 2022), are a factor in Ukraine (another dam failure, this tied to military aggression by Russia). There's a very high-risk dam in Mosul, Iraq, which has made headlines for years. Sri Lanka's economic collapse earlier this year would suggest that infrastructure maintenance may be lapsing. Afghanistan has numerous dams and hydrological projects which are now under the control of the Taliban, who've not proven to be especially capable administrators. Syria is another region with ongoing conflict. I suspect there's considerable rotting infrastructure in Russia. China is a country that's seen absolutely incredible growth and development in the past two decades, though with highly questionable quality and inspections practices. As I'd noted in my earlier comment, even in wealthy, advanced, and reasonably institutionally-sound countries such as the US there've been numerous dam failures and near-failures over the past decade.
slashdev 3y ago
> I have this impression that the area has not been well governed (for more than a few years a t a time) for millennia; because people in other areas of the world find it convenient that it not be. That’s an odd take. They’re a mess largely because of internal factors , not external ones. They were a mess before external interventions. Not saying it helped, but it’s not wholly responsible for the conditions either.
- salt-thrower 3y ago
  Not that odd of a take. It's difficult to have internal stability when you face externally-sourced "reorganizations" every generation or so.
  - azinman2 3y ago
    Internal stability helps prevent external forces.
    - salt-thrower 3y ago
      Plenty of internally stable nations have been toppled by imperialism. It's not really a good metric for how well you can "prevent external forces."
      - slashdev 3y ago
        It helps a lot. Having a strong military with competitive technology and training is also very important. Having strong alliances is even more critical. Or in the modern era, having nukes. Which is why isolated dictatorship countries want them so badly.
        salt-thrower 3y ago
        As someone else already mentioned, this is especially ironic to bring up in the case of Libya because Libya gave up their nukes to appease Western powers. Then were invaded and toppled by those same powers later on.
logicchains 3y ago
Libya was quite well-governed before Gaddafi was ousted, the most developed country in the region.
bell-cot 3y ago
> I have this impression that the area has not been well governed (for more than a few years a t a time) for millennia; because... If you specify millenia, the truth is the opposite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Prehistoric_and_Berber_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Prehistoric_a... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Phoenician_and_Greek_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Phoenician_an... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Achaemenid_and_Ptolemaic_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Achaemenid_an... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Roman_Libya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Libya#Roman_Libya But things mostly went to crap ~975 years ago, when the ruling Zirid dynasty picked the wrong side in the Abbasid/Fatimid conflict... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirid_dynasty#Apogee_in_Ifriqiya https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zirid_dynasty#Apogee_in_Ifriqi...
closewith 3y ago
Which area is that? Eastern Libya isn't exactly close to Lebanon.

26fingies 3y ago

Weird that when we destroy a government and replace it with nothing infrastructure goes unmaintained.

meepmorp 3y ago
The dams were unmaintained for years before the Qadaffi government fell.
- bannedbybros 3y ago
  [dead]
- scroblart 3y ago
  Even the nyt is willing to admit that work had begun on the dams before NATO started bombing, they feel obligated to let that tiny crack of truth in
dredmorbius 3y ago
In 1986, a major storm convulsed the region, damaging the dams and shearing soil from the ground. The structures were damaged, Dr. Ashoor said, but again they held. Despite the stresses, repairs were minimal. In 1998, the Libyan government commissioned a study that revealed cracks and fissures in the dams, said Attorney General Sadiq al-Soor. Nearly 10 years later, a Turkish company was finally contracted to repair the dams, the prosecutor added. But the government dragged its feet in paying, and the project got underway only in 2010... Just four months later, in 2011, Libyans marched against Colonel el-Qaddafi’s 42-year grip on power... In the tumult, work on the dam ceased... From TFA. Neglect has accrued over 37 years. Only 12 have elapsed since the fall of Qaddafi. NATO's direct involvement was for a brief period in 2011.
- landemva 3y ago
  > NATO's direct involvement was for a brief period in 2011. And USA's direct involvement in Nagasaki Japan by dropping Little Boy was for a brief period on August 6 1945. https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/little-boy-and-fat-man https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ahf/history/little-boy-and-fat...

bannedbybros 3y ago

[dead]

dredmorbius 3y ago

An alternative take, labeled as a "non-imperial viewpoint", was given in a dead comment: <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/14/zlnn-s14.html https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/09/14/zlnn-s14.html>

azinman2 3y ago
> today are backing a NATO war against Russia in Ukraine The idea that there’s a war against Russia in another country that they invaded tells me all I need to know about how they write.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
  I'm not sympathetic to the view. Thought I'd at least let it see daylight, however. Which is often a strong disinfectant.
  - azinman2 3y ago
    What are you disinfecting with a trash write up though?
    - dredmorbius 3y ago
      I'm the submitter of the NY Times piece here. The WSWS link was submitted by a banned account (I have "showdead" enabled so I see such comments). In the interests of fairness and to remove the claim that that viewpoint is being suppressed, I provided it myself in my own comment. I'm going to suggest that the HN readership should be sufficiently literate to compare the two pieces, the narratives, facts, and shadings presented, and if it chooses to do so, assess and/or identify slants, defects, or strengths of each piece. Which might be more productive than attacking someone who's already said that they don't endorse the piece.
    - everybodyknows 3y ago
      Trash writeups are the norm nowadays. Any effective knowledge acquisition now therefore depends upon finely-tuned comparative analysis of the opposed, competing trash streams.

aftbit 3y ago

If you watch lots of disaster documentaries, you'll realize that "warnings went unheeded" or even "problems were explicitly acknowledged in formal reports over several years but not actually resolved" are incredibly common fact patterns in structure collapse. Usually structures will give some signs of impending failure, but also repair or remediation is usually very expensive and disruptive, and there are thousands of crumbling structures that require it. Only in retrospect is it obvious where we should have concentrated our limited resources.

WeylandYutani 3y ago
There was a famous flooding in the Netherlands in 1953 that was basically predicted by engineers but the country was broke after WW2. I think Libya is the same? They just came out of a civil war.
- thriftwy 3y ago
  They actually never "came" out of civil war. They're still a fractured failed state. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/libya-and-morocco-two-very-different-responses-to-catastrophe https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/15/libya-and-moro...
- cool_dude85 3y ago
  Calling the situation in Libya a civil war is accurate but sort of elides the real situation. Libya has not recovered from the NATO regime change operation to remove Gaddafi from power. The civil war is the outcome of the regime change operation.
  - alephxyz 3y ago
    Except the civil war started a month and a half before NATO intervention
    - rlewczuk 3y ago
      [flagged]

thriftwy 3y ago

This is a mirror situation of a dam near Mosul in Iraq, about which everybody was saying it is going to collapse, but to date it did not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosul_Dam

rich_sasha 3y ago

This one event may have caused more deaths globally than nuclear power plant accidents.