The Russian-backed Libyan warlord whose militia controls the region surrounding the now-ruined city of Derna, where as many as 20,000 people were killed in a massive dam burst during a torrential downpour on Monday, had overruled the mayor’s orders for citizens to evacuate the town, telling people to remain in their homes just hours before the deluge, the Wall Street Journal reports.

On Sunday Derna Mayor Abdul Moneem Al-Ghaithi posted an evacuation order on his Facebook page and directed excavators to start pushing boulders up to the shoreline to create a levee, as he mistakenly believed the flooding would have come from the sea as “Storm Daniel” approached the Mediterranean coastline. Haftar had other ideas, convening his cabinet for a meeting where they decided instead to order a curfew and a two-day holiday while the storm swamped the town. A text alert reading simply “Stay at home” then went out to locals, a message that was largely heeded.

Hours later the dams in a canyon upstream from Derna burst, sending an apocalyptic deluge into the city, killing thousands immediately. An NGO had warned on Saturday that the dams were in at serious risk of failure given the saturation of the soil holding them up. Though it does not appear either Al-Ghaithi or Haftar were aware of that danger specifically, Al-Ghaithi, the guy at least nominally responsible to voters tried to get people out of harm’s way. Then the asshole who took power by force and is responsible really only to the Russians decided he knew better.