What It’s Like to Respond to Two Major Disasters at the Same Time

Shirin Ali
Thu, September 14, 2023 

Left: A villager walks through the rubble of destroyed houses in Douzrou, Morocco, on Tuesday. Right: People check an area damaged by flash floods in Derna, Libya, on Monday. Photos by Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images and AFP via Getty Images

Within a span of 48 hours, both Libya and Morocco were hit with devastating natural disasters that killed thousands of people and left even more missing and displaced.

First, a rare 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Morocco on Friday. It was the strongest quake the country has experienced in at least 123 years, and it struck remote villages in the High Atlas Mountains, where many buildings were not designed to withstand earthquakes. As of Wednesday, about 3,000 people have died.

Two days later, on Sunday, Mediterranean storm Daniel hit Libya and caused massive flooding, smashing through dams and washing away entire neighborhoods in the city of Derna. As of Thursday, more than 11,000 people have died.

International relief organizations don’t often deal with disasters of this magnitude unfolding simultaneously, according to Andrew Thomas, a senior media officer for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. But the IFRC already had local volunteer rescue workers on the ground in both countries, who were able to immediately respond.

Thomas spoke to Slate about the situation in both countries, how local-first disaster response will become increasingly important in a world facing more natural disasters, and how the rest of the world can help. This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Shirin Ali: Both Morocco and Libya are facing two very different disasters. How would you compare the two?

Andrew Thomas: Let’s talk about, first of all, what they’ve got in common, because there’s quite a lot in common. First off, both disasters were almost completely out of the blue. These were disasters that we did not know were going to, or were likely to, happen, a week ago. They have left two huge areas of two huge countries—in the case of Morocco, a huge area and the case of Libya, quite a concentrated area, but nonetheless—very inaccessible. Now in the case of Morocco, that is in large part because of the terrain where this disaster happened. There’s a big airport in Marrakech and planes were continuing to land, and still continue to land there now easily. But then getting from Marrakech up into the mountains or getting from other parts of Morocco into the mountains is extremely difficult once roads collapsed.

In the case of Libya, the worst hit city of Derna, the floods of the tsunami completely destroyed all the access roads in. For probably a good 48 hours after this disaster, that city was completely cut off. Now, the advantage of the Red Crescent is that we already had volunteers in both those areas. There were already volunteers in Derna preparing people to get away from the river, once the flooding looked like it might be about to happen. It didn’t work to the extent that we would have liked, but it did work to some extent. And they were certainly warning people and helping them, and they were immediately there to help survivors afterwards. Likewise, in the case of Morocco, there are volunteers living within the communities, which were hit. Now that’s a big advantage because those individual volunteers know their communities, they know the terrain, they know the language, they know how to get supplies in and so on.

How has the political situation in both countries impacted relief efforts?

Obviously, the political situation in Libya means that the response by the government authorities is not as good as it would be without that political split, let’s put it that way. In Morocco, there’s a much stronger government that’s much more able to respond. So definitely the response of the authorities in Morocco has been stronger than what has been immediately possible in Libya. But again, both countries are doing a good job in difficult circumstances. And the positive news on Libya is that we have not heard of any resistance to aid. The political split has not as yet got in the way of aid efforts at all. In fact, quite the opposite—there seems to be a real solidarity right across the political divide in Libya. People are going from the west to the east to help.

How rare is it to have two huge disasters like this happening simultaneously?

What I can say is that two huge disasters in the course of three days is pretty unprecedented. Earlier this year, there was an earthquake in Turkey and Syria. That affected two countries, but that was one event. This is two unrelated events happening within 48 hours of each other.

Is IFRC preparing for another scenario like this, where there are multiple natural disasters that require assistance at the same time?

We always are, in a sense. That is why we say as an organization, we are local first. It would be no good having some kind of centrally based hub required to fly teams in, because imagine how stretched that team would be right now with facing two disasters. This really supports the idea that the most successful way of disaster relief is having people in place before disasters hit. Given that you never know when a disaster is going to hit, it’s best to have a trained-up force of people living in those communities.

Libya’s disaster happening is, to some extent, pushing out the attention that Morocco could and should get, and that’s unfortunate. In that sense, things are stretched. But does the impact in the immediate aftermath on the ground change? No, it doesn’t. Because two groups of thousands of Red Crescent volunteers are in their own countries responding to their own emergencies—one is not affecting the other. So will it change what we’re doing? I think it will consolidate this idea that the best way to prepare communities for disaster is telling them about them, warning them about them, and having large numbers of people trained up and ready to respond in place, and as geographically spread as possible.

As we’re speaking, it’s been about three days since Libya was hit by Storm Daniel. Is there still a significant amount of flooding?

The torrent of water has finished, but there are still large parts of the city of Derna that are underwater. There are now pools of still water in large parts of Derna, but there’s not flooding in the sense that the water is rushing through and sweeping people out to sea anymore. What isn’t underwater is now muddy and dirty, and the risk, there, is stagnant pools and diseases spreading. So they’re now trying to avoid a disaster within a disaster, where that still water breeds insects and other problems and so on. That’s why getting clean drinking water is so important and, indeed, getting medical attention and getting shelter for people so they can escape those insects.

In Libya, many roads were destroyed or obstructed because of the flooding—have IFRC volunteers struggled to reach disaster zones?

They have had issues getting into the city in the first place. We lost three of our Red Crescent volunteers in Libya, which is absolutely tragic. Our hearts and condolences go to their families. It shows how there were Red Crescent volunteers in that local community right from the beginning. Those people obviously didn’t have difficulty getting into the city, but others from other areas did. The roads, at least in some places, are now passable.

And in Morocco the earthquake struck the High Atlas Mountains, which is a very remote area of the country. Have rescue workers been able to reach the disaster zone?

It’s been very, very difficult, and particularly in those first 48 hours after the earthquake. There were definitely villages that weren’t reached at all. Roads were impassable for many, many hours, and it wasn’t until heavy equipment got in and cleared those roads that people could get in to see the damage, let alone start clearing it.

And there are still villages, even now, that are not being reached with the heavy equipment perhaps needed. That’s, I’m afraid, inevitable when a disaster hits a rural mountainous area like that.

I was speaking to somebody who lives in one of the villages in the mountains, and at first she told me that she had managed to get to the nearest big village by bike, cycling up the mountain path and maneuvering a bike around the rocks because you could not get any kind of motor vehicle up there. Now, she said she was able to get a motor vehicle up there—so roads are being cleared, but that certainly didn’t happen immediately. It couldn’t happen immediately, and it has been very, very challenging.

Do rescue volunteers in Libya and Morocco have the resources they need to be able to help local communities?

They don’t, and they need more. Three planes from Turkey flew in, and they carried lots of medical supplies. They also brought in some volunteers from the Turkish Red Crescent, and they’re now helping out. Other medical supplies have come in from Egypt, and there is a need for more.

We have launched an emergency appeal as the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies that we are also running at a local level, for a financial target of 10 million Swiss francs [or about $11 million]. The American Red Cross will be our partner in that appeal in the United States. That money will go toward buying the supplies that are needed in Libya. [There is a separate emergency appeal for Morocco]. The Libyan Red Crescent will spend it on shelter, medical kits, foods that can be quickly distributed and quickly eaten, clean water, and on providing people with temporary shelter. And indeed, sadly, body bags. Already, as an organization, the Libyan Red Crescent has distributed 500 body bags, but we know, unfortunately, that a lot more are needed.

Is there a process in place to help victims of both disasters find their missing family and friends?

Bringing family members back together is an important thing that the Red Crescent volunteers are trying to do—family reunification, as quickly as possible, is a really important psychosocial support. It’s bad enough that so many people have died, but for those who haven’t died, thinking loved ones have died is horrific, if they haven’t. So one of the things that we’re doing, post-disaster, is prioritizing reuniting families wherever you can.

The search and rescue phase of Libya was unique, because people who died in Libya died quicker. That’s because, in the vast majority of cases, people were swept away, and drowned once they were taken into the sea. Yes, some buildings collapsed as well on top of people, but even then, there was so much water that the drowning happened, too. In that sense, the search and rescue phase of that one was a shorter period of time. In Morocco, buildings have collapsed and now, even several days later, there is still the possibility that people are alive under rubble. So the search and rescue efforts continue in Morocco, in a sense, in a way that, in Libya, unfortunately, they don’t.