Libya — Natural Disaster Report
Africa · Live status: Elevated (1 active event)
Current situation: 1 natural disaster event is currently monitored in Libya, with a worst severity of Moderate. Details, sources and timestamps are listed below.
Libya's most devastating recent disaster was not primarily meteorological but structural: in September 2023, Storm Daniel brought extreme rainfall to the Jebel Akhdar, and two ageing dams above Derna failed in succession, sending a wall of water through the city and washing entire districts into the sea. Thousands died and thousands more remain missing, with figures uncertain. The catastrophe highlighted how infrastructure neglect during prolonged conflict converts a severe storm into a mass-casualty event. Elsewhere, extreme desert heat, sandstorms and flash flooding in wadis are the main hazards.
Live map — Libya
Loading live data… · Marker positions are approximate; severity is labelled in each popup. Sources: USGS, GDACS, NASA EONET, NOAA/NWS, EMSC.
Active alerts & recent events
Latest earthquakes
No events match these filters right now. Data syncs run continuously — check the live map or widen the filters.
Near a particular city? Earthquake history near a place · disasters reported near a place · compare Libya's earthquake record with another country.
By hazard in Libya
Each of these has its own page: recent activity, the season it happens in, past events and what to do.
Risk profile
Flash floods and Mediterranean storms September-March. Extreme heat May-September. Sandstorms and ghibli winds in spring. Infrastructure failure as a compounding risk.
Disaster displacement in Libya
12,650 internal displacements
Largest single event: 7,091 from flood, beginning 16 August 2024.
A displacement is a movement, not a person: somebody forced from home more than once in a year is counted more than once. These are movements caused by disasters only — displacement caused by conflict is counted separately and is not included here.
| Hazard | Displacements in 2024 |
|---|---|
| Flood | 12,650 |
Source: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), Global Internal Displacement Database. IDMC publishes annually, so the latest year here is the latest they have finalised — not the current one.
What this site sees in Libya
| Source | Events here, last 12 months | What it will not tell you |
|---|---|---|
| NASA FIRMS | 28 | Global, but it sees only what the satellite saw on its pass, and thick cloud hides fire. A quiet day here is not evidence that nothing burned. |
| GDACS (European Commission / United Nations) | 2 | Global, but deliberately selective: it alerts on disasters likely to need INTERNATIONAL response. Serious local flooding that a national agency handles alone will not appear here. |
| US Geological Survey | none | Global for earthquakes above roughly M4.5, and denser where there are more seismometers. It publishes nothing about any other hazard. |
| European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre | none | Global for earthquakes, with the best coverage in Europe and the Mediterranean. It publishes nothing about any other hazard. |
| NASA EONET | none | Global and curated rather than automatic, so it is slower than the raw feeds and carries far fewer events. |
| WMO Alert Hub (national weather services) | none | Each warning comes from one country own alerting authority, so the scale is that agency scale and is not comparable between countries. Many agencies publish no coordinates, and those warnings are placed at the centre of the country rather than where the weather is - the area name is the real answer. |
| MeteoAlarm (EUMETNET) | none | Europe only. It publishes no coordinates at all, so every warning here is placed at the centre of its country and the area name is the only reliable indication of where it applies. |
| NOAA Tsunami Warning Centers | none | These two centres warn for the US and Canadian coasts and for the Pacific and Caribbean basins. The Indian Ocean and Mediterranean have their own warning centres, which are not read here. Their routine information statements - the ones that say there is NO tsunami danger - are deliberately not imported, so an empty tsunami list means no threat was issued, not that nothing was checked. |
| NOAA National Hurricane Center | none | The Atlantic and the eastern and central Pacific only. No typhoon in the western Pacific and no cyclone in the Indian Ocean or the southern hemisphere appears here; those come from GDACS and from national services. |
| ReliefWeb (UN OCHA) | none | Global, but it reports on humanitarian RESPONSE. It arrives days after an event rather than during it, and never functions as a warning. |
Not applicable here: US National Weather Service — Covers the United States only. It publishes nothing about any other country, so its absence from a country page is not an outage. ; USGS Volcano Hazards Program — United States volcanoes only - Alaska, Hawaii, the Cascades, Yellowstone, California and the Northern Mariana Islands. It says nothing about Indonesia, Iceland, Italy or anywhere else, so its silence about a foreign eruption is not a judgement about that eruption.
Major historical disasters — Libya
| Event | Type | Date | Fatalities |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 Storm Daniel — Derna Dam Floods | Flood | Sep 10, 2023 | 5,900 |
Frequently asked questions
What natural disasters are currently active in Libya?
There are currently 1 monitored natural disaster events in Libya. The overall risk status is Elevated. See the live list on this page for details and sources.
What natural hazards does Libya face?
Libya's most devastating recent disaster was not primarily meteorological but structural: in September 2023, Storm Daniel brought extreme rainfall to the Jebel Akhdar, and two ageing dams above Derna failed in succession, sending a wall of water through the city and washing entire districts into the sea. Thousands died and thousands more remain missing, with figures uncertain.
When is the main natural disaster season in Libya?
Flash floods and Mediterranean storms September-March. Extreme heat May-September. Sandstorms and ghibli winds in spring. Infrastructure failure as a compounding risk. Seasons shift from year to year; treat these as the usual pattern, not a forecast.
What is the deadliest recorded natural disaster in Libya?
Of the events documented on this site, the deadliest in Libya is the 2023 Storm Daniel — Derna Dam Floods (2023), with around 5,900 deaths. Confirmed ~5,900 with thousands still missing; early estimates ranged up to 20,000. This is drawn from documented records held here and is not a complete historical archive.
Where does this disaster data for Libya come from?
Data is aggregated from official sources including USGS, GDACS (EC/UN), NASA EONET, ReliefWeb and national agencies. Every event links to its original source, and update times are shown on each record.
Data sources: USGS, GDACS (EC/UN), NASA EONET, NOAA/NWS, EMSC, ReliefWeb (UN OCHA). See data sources & attribution and methodology. This page does not replace official emergency guidance.