JEDDAH, 14 February 2003 — Four people were killed when a five-story building collapsed on them early yesterday in the historic Al-Balad district here.

Rescue services arrived on the scene but could do little but clear the rubble peppered with personal belongings in an attempt to locate the dead bodies.

Access routes through the old quarter remained blocked for the day.

The building, made from traditional materials of dressed coral blocks, wooden beams and lime-mortar, was a residential block occupied by expatriate workers.

According to a neighbor who spoke to Arab News, one of the residents on the ground floor was converting his room into a small shop, which he thought would be popular because the building stood on the corner of a popular short cut.

“He cut a hole through the wall to make a door which would open onto the street, and also removed some of the ceiling,” he explained.

He then began to dig out some of the floor to lower the inside level of the building to street level. “When he had dug down a little, the hole became full of water which sprung up through the ground and the building came down on top of him.”

The water table in Al-Balad lies just below the surface and the foundations of the buildings, if they have any, are standing in a water soaked environment.

The Saudi Geological Survey estimated at a water conference in Jeddah in October that around 70 percent of urban Jeddah has substrata soaked with water to the extent that it is unsuitable for building, and that much of it has already been built on.

Omar Abdu, another local resident, told Arab News about one of the survivors, an Egyptian woman still too shocked to speak.

She lives on the fourth floor and had a miraculous escape; but her son was not so lucky.

He had returned from work and his mother told him to relax in the front room while she cooked him a meal in the adjoining room. A minute later, she heard a roar and ran to the door of the front room.

The entire side of the building had disappeared. The door still hangs open over the rubble in the street.