Deadly natural disasters made history in Africa with intense earthquakes and extreme floods less than two days apart.

According to CNN, a devastating earthquake struck Morocco at 11:11 p.m. Western European Summer Time on Sept. 8. The tremor’s magnitude was of magnitude 6.8 which was enough to completely destroy many towns and residential areas. The US Geological Survey reported that shaking was also felt in countries as far away as Spain, Portugal and Algeria.

Since 1900, nine earthquakes between the magnitudes of 5.0-6.0 have affected the Moroccan region. Several earthquakes have hit Morocco in the past, but its most recent disaster is considered to be its deadliest since 1960, when a 5.9 magnitude earthquake struck the same area. Business Insider Africa stated that over 2.8 million people were impacted by this incident and more than 2,900 perished during this tragedy.

Many leaders around the world have offered support to Morocco. France is giving five million euros (or $5.3 million) to non-governmental organizations to assist with rescue efforts. A search and rescue team from Spain consisting of 56 soldiers and four dogs traveled to Morocco to help locate survivors and bodies stuck in debris. Turkey, which also felt a strong earthquake earlier this year, is prepared to send 265 emergency personnel and 1,000 tents to aid in cleaning up waste.

60 search and rescue specialists from Britain have been deployed with medical equipment and an emergency response team. Algeria, which wouldn’t allow Moroccan planes to fly to its country in 2021 due to cutting diplomatic ties with Morocco, granted humanitarian and medical crews the ability to fly to and from the Arab region as they’re contributing to recovery efforts. The Chinese Red Cross Society is providing $200,000 in cash to benefit relief and rescue work. United States President Joe Biden is prepared to give assistance to Morocco in any way he can.

Not even two days later, the eastern region of Libya was flooded by heavy rain. Earlier this month, tropical storm Daniel passed through the Mediterranean Sea, including Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, before arriving in eastern Libya. In the city of Derna, the torrential rainfall caused two dams to collapse and that made the flooding even worse. This led to the displacement of over 34,000 people as mentioned by The New York Times.

The bursting of the two dams are actively under investigation to determine if there were other contributors to their explosion as experts warned previously that they can break at any time. As a result of this crisis, buildings were ruined and a lot of cars sank. In addition, it is predicted that many people ended up drowning in these waters. The city of Derna is quite literally underwater, which greatly inhibits rescue efforts. Right now, it isn’t clear how many people have been rescued.

President Biden recently said the United States would ship emergency funds overseas and collaborate with the United Arab Emirates and the Libyan Government to do so. Other countries that want to provide aid to those involved in this natural disaster include the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

Dr. James Watling, an Associate Professor of Biology at John Carroll, shared his story with The Carroll News about his reaction when he heard about the massive earthquake that struck Morocco and the recent flooding that occurred in Libya. He also gave insights as to why the disaster in Libya was as severe as it was.

“I was of course sorry to hear about both of these tragedies. I’ll focus more on the flooding in Libya…[as] flooding is typical of extreme weather events that we expect to become more frequent as climate changes,” Watling noted.

He explained, “The general trend of global warming means that more water evaporates into the atmosphere and then returns to the Earth’s surface as rain. That means that extreme rain events that led to the devastating floods in Libya are expected to become more common. Similarly, scientists are starting to see that hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean are becoming ‘wetter.’ ”

The loved ones of missing people are begging and pleading on social media to help bring their absent family members home. Some are even attempting to locate their unaccounted loved ones at the scene of the devastation. Due to the severity of the flooding, officials can only estimate the total number of fatalities. Already, the confirmed death toll is at least 11,300 and that is expected to rise as search and rescue efforts increase, as indicated by NBC News.

Despite minimum accessibility to the city of Derna, authorities are working diligently to deploy search and rescue teams and had groups from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates travel to Libya to begin searching for victims. Officials in Libya are making efforts to extend those services in hopes it’s not too late to locate survivors of the flooding.