纽约时报中文网 - 中英对照版-中英利比亚洪灾逾5000人遇难为何伤亡如此惨重
September 12, 2023 6 min 1088 words
为什么你还不知道？还不是你们把人家政府给推翻了？
More than 5,000 people were killed in Libya after torrential rains caused two dams to burst near the coastal city of Derna, destroying much of the city and carrying entire neighborhoods into the sea, local authorities said on Tuesday.
利比亚地方当局周二表示，暴雨导致沿海城市德尔纳附近的两座大坝决堤，该市大部分地区被毁，多处社区被完全卷入海中，造成5000多人丧生。
Libya, a North African nation splintered by a war, was ill-prepared for the storm, called Daniel, which swept across the Mediterranean Sea to batter its coastline. The country is administered by two rival governments, complicating rescue and aid efforts, and despite its vast oil resources, its infrastructure had been poorly maintained after more than a decade of political chaos.
这个被战争撕裂的北非国家对飓风“丹尼尔”准备不足，这场风暴已经席卷了地中海，侵袭了利比亚的海岸线。利比亚由两个敌对政权分治，这导致救灾援助工作更加复杂。尽管石油资源丰富，但经过十多年来的政治动荡，利比亚的基础设施维护十分糟糕。
In the city of Derna alone, at least 5,200 people died, said Tarek al-Kharraz, a spokesman for the interior ministry of the government that oversees eastern Libya, according to the Libyan television station al-Masar. But the floodwaters also swept through other eastern settlements, including Shahhat, Al-Bayda and Marj, and at least 20,000 people were displaced.
据利比亚电视台al-Masar报道，管理利比亚东部的政府的内政部发言人塔里克·哈拉兹表示，仅在德尔纳市就有至少5200人死亡。但洪水还淹没了东部其它聚居地，包括沙哈特、贝达和马吉，至少有2万民众流离失所。
Thousands more were missing and the death toll is likely to rise in the coming days. The flooding left bodies scattered in the streets while buckling buildings, sinking vehicles and blocking roads, impeding access to the most stricken areas.
另外还有数以万计的人失踪，死亡数可能也会在未来一段时间继续上升。洪水过后的街道尸横遍野，建筑倒塌，车辆被淹，道路堵塞，导致难以进入受灾最严重的地区。
“We still cannot comprehend the magnitude of what has happened,” said Jawhar Ali, 28, a Derna native who lives in Turkey and spent two sleepless nights seeking news from his family back home, where communications were cut off by the disaster. “The shock we are experiencing is terrible.”
“我们仍然不知道这场灾难到底有多严重，”28岁的贾哈尔·阿里说，他来自德尔纳，现居土耳其，已经连续两晚没有合眼，不断搜寻关于家乡的最新消息，因为灾难已经导致通讯中断。“我们所经历的冲击实在太可怕了。”
Analysts said the country’s woes — political division, economic instability, corruption, environmental degradation and dilapidated infrastructure — seemed to coalesce in one catastrophe when the dams south of the city collapsed. The flooding came days after an earthquake in Morocco, another North African nation, killed more than 2,900 people.
分析人士称，利比亚政治分裂、经济不稳定、腐败、环境恶化和基础设施破败的种种问题似乎都在德尔纳南部大坝垮塌后的灾难中同时爆发出来了。就在洪灾的前几天，另一个北非国家摩洛哥才发生地震，造成2900多人丧生。
But to Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan policy research center, the two events felt profoundly different, given the unpredictable timing of the earth’s tremors compared with a storm like Daniel, which can be forecast hours or days ahead.
但在利比亚政策研究中心萨德克研究所所长阿纳斯·埃尔·戈马蒂看来，这两件事的性质是截然不同的，因为地震发生的时间无法预知，但“丹尼尔”这样的飓风可以提前数小时或数天预测到。
Even after the storm displayed its destructive power last week in Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, killing more than a dozen people, Libyan authorities seemed to have no serious plan to monitor the dams, warn residents or evacuate them, Mr. El Gomati said.
戈马蒂说，尽管上周这场飓风已在希腊、土耳其和保加利亚造成严重破坏，导致十几人死亡，利比亚当局似乎还是没有认真制定监控大坝情况的计划，也没有警告或疏散居民。
“We say Mother Nature, but this is the act of man — it’s the incompetence of Libya’s political elites,” Mr. El Gomati said. “There’s no words you can find to describe the biblical level of suffering those people have to endure.”
“都说是天灾，其实是人祸——这是利比亚政治精英阶层的无能，”埃尔·戈马蒂说。“已经找不到任何语言来形容人民所要承受的苦难是多么深重了。”
The dams unleashed water that poured through Derna, a city of roughly 100,000 people, Ahmed al-Mismari, a spokesman for the Libyan National Army, the dominant political force in the area, said in a televised news conference on Monday.
周一，在电视直播的新闻发布会上，当地主导的政治势力利比亚国民军的发言人艾哈迈德·米斯马里透露，大坝泄出的洪水灌入了约有10万人口的德尔纳全市。
“It’s the first time we’ve been exposed to this type of weather,” Mr. al-Mismari said, calling the scenario “completely unexpected.” Conditions were making it difficult to orchestrate rescue and aid operations, with all roads to the most affected areas either cut off or nearly cut off, he said.
“这是我们第一次遇到这种类型的天气，”米斯马里说，他形容这是一个“完全猝不及防”的景象。由于所有通往受灾最严重地区的道路要么被切断或几乎被切断，他说救援行动的组织十分困难。
Citizens who escaped Derna left the city “as if they were born today, with nothing,” he said.
他说，逃离德尔纳的居民都是“孑然一身，就像当初赤条条来到人世一样”。
The flooding recalled the effects of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the storm struck Louisiana and became a calamity after levees in New Orleans ruptured, inundating vast parts of the city.
这场洪水让人想起了2005年飓风“卡特里娜”的灾后状况，当时那场飓风袭击了路易斯安那州，导致新奥尔良防洪堤决口，引发了该市大部分地区被淹的灾祸。
It also underscored how climate change can combine with political conflicts and economic failure to magnify the scale of disasters.
如今这场洪灾也凸显出，当气候变化遇上政治冲突和经济衰败，其灾难规模将会如何扩大。
Libya is divided between the internationally recognized government based in Tripoli, the capital, and a separately administered region in the east, including Derna — where the main power broker is the Libyan National Army and its commander, Khalifa Hifter, a longtime militia leader.
利比亚政权分裂，一部分落在首都的黎波里受国际社会认可的政权，还有一部分则在包括德尔纳在内的东部独立区，当地的主要势力是利比亚国民军，及其领导民兵组织多年的指挥官哈利法·哈夫塔尔。
“Libya for the past 10 years has gone through one war to another, one political crisis to another,” said Claudia Gazzini, a senior Libya analyst for the International Crisis Group. “Essentially this has meant that, for the past 10 years, there hasn’t really been much investment in the country’s infrastructure.”
“过去10年间，利比亚经历了一场又一场战争，一次又一次政治危机，”国际危机组织的利比亚问题高级专家克劳迪娅·加兹尼表示。“这意味在过去10年，利比亚的基础设施实际上没有得到什么真正的投入。”
The country is also especially vulnerable to climate change and severe storms. Warming causes the waters of the Mediterranean to expand and its sea levels to rise, eroding shorelines and contributing to flooding, with low-lying coastal areas of Libya at particular risk, according to the United Nations.
利比亚还特别容易受到气候变化和严重飓风的影响。据联合国称，全球变暖导致地中海水域扩大，海平面上升侵蚀海岸线，引发洪水泛滥，利比亚的低洼沿海地区尤其危险。
Libya endured 42 years of autocratic rule under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi before he was overthrown in a revolt in 2011, during the Arab Spring.
利比亚曾被穆阿迈尔·卡扎菲独裁统治42年，直到2011年，他的政权在“阿拉伯之春”期间的叛乱中被推翻。
Over the next decade, the country was fractured by a civil war that drew in multiple foreign players, including the United States. At one point, Turkey backed a provisional government in Tripoli while Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt supported Mr. Hifter, a former Libyan general.
Today, the country is governed by the western administration based in Tripoli, led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeiba, and an eastern-based authority led by Osama Hamad. Dozens of armed groups remain influential, a point reinforced by deadly clashes last month in Tripoli. Despite possessing the largest oil and gas reserves on the African continent, the country was ill-equipped to deal with disaster.
现在，利比亚的执政者包括在的黎波里由总理阿卜杜勒·哈米德·德贝巴领导的西部政权，以及由奥萨马·哈马德领导的东部政权。仍有影响力的军事组织多达数十个，的黎波里上个月才爆发的致命冲突也再次反映了这一问题。尽管拥有非洲最大的石油和天然气储量，利比亚应对灾难的能力非常低下。
The different authorities in Libya appeared to be working together to some extent to coordinate the search and rescue efforts, as medical teams began converging on the region to treat survivors and search for the missing. They included rescue workers sent by the government in Tripoli as well as others sent by Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, who arrived in the eastern city of Benghazi on Tuesday. Several aid groups also said they were scaling up their services in the country.
利比亚的分裂政权似乎在一定程度上合作协调了搜救工作，医疗队开始在该地区聚集，医治幸存者并寻找失踪人员。这些医疗队包括的黎波里政府派出的救援人员，还有来自土耳其和阿联酋的其他人员，他们于周二抵达东部城市班加西。一些救援组织也表示正在扩大在该国的服务范围。
President Biden, in a statement on Tuesday, said that the United States was “sending emergency funds to relief organizations and coordinating with the Libyan authorities and the U.N. to provide additional support.” President Emmanuel Macron of France also announced the country would send financial support and other aid for organizations working on the ground.
拜登总统在周二的声明中表示，美国正在“为援助机构提供紧急资金，并同利比亚当局及联合国协调，以提供更多的支持”。法国总统马克龙也宣布，法国将为前往救灾现场的机构提供财政支持和其它援助。
However, it was unclear how much aid had reached the most-affected areas; Benghazi is more than 180 miles from Derna by car, and many of the area’s roads had been cut off by the flooding, the Derna City Council said on Monday. It called for the opening of a maritime passageway to Derna and for urgent international intervention.
然而，目前尚不清楚有多少援助抵达了受灾最严重的地区；班加西距离德尔纳近290公里车程，据德尔纳市政府周一表示，当地许多道路都已被洪水淹没。当局呼吁开设通往德尔纳的海上通道，并请求得到紧急国际干预。