Another 10,000 are reported missing and 30,000 are displaced. This could be one of the most deadly engineering (in this case, maintenance and alert systems) failures of all time. I can only think of 2-3 worse ones, and that’s counting the high end of Chernobyl projected to early cancer deaths.
Let's have a little talk here, shall we? There's a whole lot of issues tied up in this that nobody's mentioned. Yet. For starters (because 1959 is a good date for when the oil companies knew that global warming was a thing), odds are that global warming did play at least a partial role in the weather that led to this disaster. So, expect to see more of this shit in the future. Next, while Qaddafi might have been a dirtbag, he did seem to understand the concept of taking care of infrastructure. Wonder what might have happened if we'd have stayed out of things when folks started to protest his regime? Or, perhaps, if we'd learned our lessons from what happened in Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out, we'd have helped the country form a stable, democratic government, instead of just wandering off after we were done blowing shit up. (Oh, and this is a "both sides" kinda thing, since the GOP was screaming that Obama needed to do something, until just after we started helping those who wanted to overthrow Qaddafi. Then they were opposed, but not enough to actually do anything about it.) Finally, this should serve (but absolutely won't, because they're more interested in cosplay than actual facts of the matter) as a warning to the "burn it all down and start over folks." If you aren't prepared to ensure that important infrastructure such as dams are properly maintained, this is what you're going to get. And lots of it. You know the meme that says folks who plan to be a warlord in a post-apocalyptic future can really only expect to be the guy who gets killed for his chickens? Yeah, that's being optimistic.
