More than 11,000 people are now known to have died, with thousands still missing, after Mediterranean storm Daniel made landfall in Libya over the weekend. Inland areas were flooded, as seen in Sentinel 2 images released by the European Union’s space programme on Wednesday. Coastal settlements built near or over alluvial fans and deltas of ancient Wadi — the Arabic term traditionally referring to river valleys — were swept away. In Derna alone, the worst affected city, the flood destroyed two-thirds of all buildings and killed over 2,000 people. … A “grey swan” is what experts describe as a predictable, yet improbable, event with significant and wide-ranging long-term impacts. Modern dams, reservoirs and infrastructure to control floods are build to withstand meteorological conditions as experienced in the last 100 years.
-Written by David Bressan, a freelance geologist working mostly in the Eastern Alps.

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