[mymac]

Root cause analysis is complex for a reason. Separating out contributing causes from root causes is difficult and sometimes even impossible.

Would this dam have failed eventually? Probably yes, on a long enough time-scale. Would it have failed now if not for that storm? Probably no.

Note that even in the developed West there are plenty of pieces of infrastructure at risk because of climate driven extremities.

[marcosdumay]

Would it have failed if it was properly maintained?

I bet somebody knows this. And that is the question that imposes culpability, not the ones you asked.

But if you are not going for culpability and just assumes everybody is honestly trying to improve, the question to ask is "was it properly maintained?"

[mymac]

Infrastructure needs maintenance, culpability only makes sense if there are enough funds for such maintenance and if there is an organization level compatible with the kind and scope of the work. I wouldn't make any assumptions about that in the case of Lybia.

[hnbad]

Notably a large number of bridges of the German autobahn was recently found to be dangerously unmaintained to the point where the only recommended recourse was to tear them down and rebuild them. Luckily Germany doesn't normally see significant earthquakes and the storms apparently haven't been severe enough to destroy any of them.

In my part of Germany we had a severe rain storm this week that caused local flooding in part because the sewage treatment plant could not process the intake quickly enough, resulting in the sewers getting backlogged while rain was still pouring down.

Even without outright neglect a lot of infrastructure simply can't handle situations significantly outside the standard range of operation.

[Jensson]

> Luckily Germany doesn't normally see significant earthquakes and the storms apparently haven't been severe enough to destroy any of them.

It isn't luck, if Germany had earthquakes they would have built the bridges differently. You don't build things to handle situations that doesn't happen.

[hnbad]

Well, yes, but the lucky part is that unlike severe weather events, the frequency and severity of earthquakes isn't likely to significantly change in Germany.

Our forests died because the trees we planted can't cope with the kind of heat waves we're now seeing. Our towns get flooded because our infrastructure wasn't build to handle this much downpour. But luckily earthquakes aren't something we have to worry about as much, climate change or not.

[sebazzz]

> Note that even in the developed West there are plenty of pieces of infrastructure at risk because of climate driven extremities.

Wasn't there a failure in Scandinavia recently?

[Jensson]

"Dam failing" and "dam failing unexpectedly" are not comparable situations.

Floods happens all the time in the west, people dying from floods however is rare since when they happen we know why and how and when it will happen so we can evacuate people.

Libya failed to warn the people here, that is why so many died, that is the most significant failure and should have been the easiest part, it shows severe problems with their management of the dam. They should have known how much stress the dam can handle, and that this storm was likely to make it fail, and evacuate the people when failure was close.

In the west we would just say "the dam will likely fail due to bad maintenance", the destruction will be costly but lives wont be lost, and in many cases we can prematurely destroy parts of the dam to avoid destroying downstream infrastructure and that way come out of it almost scot free.