The key facts
- Five people, including three children, were killed under a sand embankment at a camp in Deir al-Balah; more than 10 injured people were rescued
- Gaza authorities report more than 70,000 tents flooded and damage of about $3 million
- Rescuers received more than 2,100 calls during the storm but were able to respond to only 218
The collapse in the dark
In the evening at a camp for displaced people in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, about an hour after evening prayers, screams rang out from the tents. Ayman Ayyad, 27, himself a displaced resident, ran toward the sound along with others: in the darkness and cold it turned out that a large rain-soaked sand embankment had collapsed onto several tents. “Some children were buried in sand, and people were screaming,” he told The National. Young men began digging through the rubble before civil defence arrived; women and children were pulled out from under the sand and the debris of shelters.
The dead and the rescued
According to the Palestinian Civil Defence, five people were killed, including three children — they suffocated under the sand. Rescuers searched for victims for more than two hours and, according to the service's spokesman Mahmoud Bassal, rescued more than ten wounded. He explained that the tents had already been flooded during the storm, and their occupants had repaired them with makeshift materials; the families believed the worst weather had passed, but, it is believed, rainwater washed out the embankment behind the tents, and it collapsed without warning. Bassal also said that the shortage of heavy rescue equipment may have contributed to the deaths, and blamed Israeli restrictions on bringing the necessary equipment into Gaza.
The storm across the Strip
The collapse came after several days of heavy rain and wind that flooded camps for displaced people across the Strip and damaged structures already weakened by shelling. Gaza authorities reported that more than 70,000 tents housing displaced families were flooded, with water rising to about a metre in some camps; dozens of walls and buildings also collapsed. Damage was preliminarily estimated by officials at $3 million. Ismail al-Thawabta, head of the Gaza government media office, told The National that civil defence received more than 2,100 calls for help during the storm but was able to respond to only 218 due to a shortage of personnel and equipment; he called for tents, tarpaulins and rescue equipment to be delivered to the Strip.
Camps without infrastructure
The scale of the flooding extended far beyond Deir al-Balah. In Jabalia, in the north of the Strip, 41-year-old Mahmoud al-Zein said rainwater flooded the tent where he lives with his family of eight, including small children: mattresses, food and the rest of their belongings were soaked, and, he said, no one provided any help. The family lives near the “yellow line” marking the area controlled by Israel, and, according to al-Zein, they have nowhere else to go; the camp has no proper drainage or other basic infrastructure. He added that displaced people had been asking for sturdy tents and tarpaulins for months but had received no meaningful help. A civil defence spokesman called the deaths in Deir al-Balah yet another warning about the conditions in which displaced families live on the eve of winter.
