UN urgently needs almost $71m to help Libya flood victims

After fatal flash floods ravaged Libya over the weekend, the United Nations is urgently seeking more than $71 million to help those who are most in need.

Hurricane-strength On September 10, Storm Daniel struck Libya, leaving thousands of people missing in addition to at least 4,000 fatalities.

The United Nations Humanitarian Agency (Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) stated in a quick appeal on Thursday that it anticipates the death toll to increase.

Two upstream dams failed on Sunday, causing one of the worst-affected areas, the city of Derna, to become a wasteland.

Given that most of the city’s roadways have crumbled and estimations indicate that 30 percent of the city may have vanished, local authorities are requesting the establishment of a maritime corridor for relief efforts and evacuations.

Meanwhile, the entire coastal community of Sousse is still underwater.

In order to address the “most urgent needs of 250,000 people targeted out of the 884,000 people projected to be in need,” according to OCHA, who described the situation as “catastrophic,” its humanitarian partners need $71.4 million.

Martin Griffiths, head of UN OCHA, had made the announcement of a $10 million immediate emergency fund on Wednesday.

Neighborhoods in their entirety have vanished off the map. In a statement, he said that “whole families, caught off guard, were washed away in the flood of water.”

In this trying moment for Libya, getting life-saving supplies to people, avoiding a secondary health crisis, and fast reestablishing some kind of normalcy must take precedence above all other considerations.

In addition to these nations, the United States, European Union, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and a number of others have either provided or promised assistance, and foreign rescue teams have already been brought in to look for survivors and collect bodies.