A year later, images of the catastrophic flood that devastated the Libyan coastal city of Derna, claiming thousands of lives, are still vivid in the memories of survivors.
“Life stopped. Only the body is still alive. I am not the same person anymore,” says Abdul Aziz Aldali, a young resident.
He lost his mother, father and nephews, who came to stay with them, when Storm Daniel hit the city on the evening of September 10.
“I consider them martyrs. My neighbors, the Nasser family, lost 24 martyrs. The water reached them first,” Mr. Aldali says.
Derna is built on the delta of the Wadi Derna River. The river flows through two dams before crossing the city and flowing into the sea.
Due to unusually heavy rainfall and a lack of maintenance on the aging infrastructure, the dams became overloaded and eventually burst around 2:00 a.m. local time on September 11.
“There was a huge wave that came through (the house). Water filled two floors in less than a second. The water was moving us through the house in the darkness,” Mr. Aldali recalled.
“The water took me up and down. I swim very well, but it’s hard to control when the water keeps turning you over.”
Eventually he was pushed out by the waves.
“I saw a network tower. There was a wave coming and it was pushing me towards it, so I just clung to it and tried to resist it as much as I could.”
A deluge of water hit the city with an estimated force of 24 million tons, sparing no one.
“I looked at the people – little children who couldn’t save themselves. Those who were meant to live survived. Those who weren’t died,” Mr. Aldali recalled.
Like many other residents, Mr. Aldali has left the city and has now moved to Umm al-Rizam, a picturesque village 40 minutes’ drive south of Derna.
More than 5,900 people have been killed and another 2,380 are missing in a city of about 90,000, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha).
Locals believe the death toll from the flooding is much higher.
“Almost all my friends have lost a family member. People in Derna believe that more than 10,000 people died in the flooding,” says Dernawi journalist Johr Ali, who now lives in Turkey’s capital, Istanbul, and follows developments in his hometown.
For many Dernawis, the trauma of loss is compounded by the painful uncertainty of not knowing what will happen to their missing family members.
“I only found (the bodies of) my nephews,” Mr. Aldali said. “This world is worth nothing without my parents. I only ask Allah to reunite me with them in heaven.”
The General Authority for Search and Identification of Missing Persons (Gasimp) has been collecting DNA samples from human remains over the past 12 months in the hope of finding matches with surviving family members.
“We collected the bodies, took samples of the teeth and other bones, filed reports stating the cause of death and buried the bodies,” said Gasimp director Dr Kamal Sewi.
Finding the victims’ remains, however, proved difficult, with some body parts found as far as 60 kilometers (37 miles) from shore or under collapsed buildings.
A special cemetery has been set up for the victims on the outskirts of Derna, but the graves remain nameless as most of the bodies have not been officially identified, leaving thousands of families without the closure they so desperately seek.
Numerical codes are stored inside and outside each cemetery. These are eventually given a name if the deceased’s DNA matches that of a living relative.
However, the magnitude of the displacement caused by the Flood has complicated this identification step.
“It’s easier to match DNA samples from direct relatives, such as parents or siblings,” Dr. Sewi says, but finding those closest relatives has proven challenging.
“People left the city because they had no home anymore, but they did not come to report their missing,” says Dr. Sewi.
This has further slowed the identification process, as teams have to look for second- or third-generation relatives, making DNA matching more complicated.
“(Identification) is not a process that takes one or two months,” says Dr. Sewi.
But while the lives of many Dernawis remain uncertain as they wait for news of their loved ones, the city’s reconstruction is in full swing.
Roads have been cleared, schools and mosques are being repaired and new houses have been built.
The so-called Korean Buildings, a complex of towering, white-painted apartment blocks, have become the pride of local authorities, who have also organised press tours to show off the finished work.
The complex was completed more than a decade after the government of then-leader Muammar Gaddafi commissioned a South Korean company to build the complex.
Construction work was halted after the outbreak of civil war in 2011, but resumed after the flooding.
Some displaced families have also returned to Derna, attracted by the possibility of receiving compensation of up to 100,000 Libyan dinars (US$21,000; £16,000) and subsidised rent.
But financial aid to some families – as well as reconstruction – is being slowed by bureaucratic bottlenecks and allegations of financial mismanagement.
A source at research organisation The Sentry told the BBC the process appeared “opaque” and that there were no clear rules.
“Some families who thought they qualified are still waiting,” he added.
There are also growing concerns that flood victims have become pawns in power struggles between Libya’s rival governments, based in the capital Tripoli and the eastern city of Benghazi.
Belqasem Haftar, a son of military ruler General Khalifa Haftar, who controls eastern Libya, is leading the reconstruction effort through the Derna Reconstruction Fund.
With an allocation of more than $2 billion to the fund, the Haftars will gain enormous leverage to expand their power base.
“It is a blank check without any oversight,” Libya analyst Anas El Gomati, head of the Sadeq Institute think tank, told AFP news agency.
A spokesman for General Hatar’s Libyan army did not respond to a request for comment from the BBC.
The Sentry’s source, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivities surrounding the issue, noted that the governor of Libya’s central bank had fled the country after a conflict with the local government.
“The money allocated to the reconstruction of Derna helped bring the central bank in Tripoli closer to the Haftar family, but the government in Tripoli was strongly opposed to this,” he added.
As the power struggle and chaos continue, Dernawis like Mr. Aldali are cautiously trying to rebuild their lives.
“We ask people to pray for those who are behind the maintenance that we are seeing now and to make the country look better than it was. May Allah have mercy on them,” he says.
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