JEDDAH, 13 November 2003 — Two days after the violent storm that drenched the Makkah Region, wreaking havoc and killing at least 12 people, the slow process of clearing up the damage continues.

In the 24 hours of last Sunday, the region received 40mm of rain, two-thirds of its yearly average and over one-third of the yearly average for the Kingdom.

Some of the smaller backstreets in Jeddah’s Faisaliah district are still under half a meter of water and many more are littered with stones, sand and flotsam deposited by the floods. Compounding the driving hazard caused by the detritus of the flood, huge numbers of potholes have opened up, many concealed by seemingly shallow puddles.

Abdul Razzaq, a gardener at a villa in the Al-Rawdah district, summed up the situation. “First we had to clear out the water and spend the day cleaning and drying. Now there is a big problem with rubbish on the road outside to fix and trees to clear.”

Trees brought down by the storm are still lying across roads and sidestreets. Half-hearted attempts have been made to clear them but generally little, if any, effort seems to have been made to clear them away. Many remain in the streets, uprooted by winds and water.

Private citizens bear the responsibility of clearing up the damage to trees planted on their property. Those planted on the median strips are the responsibility of the Jeddah Municipality. However, many of the trees causing obstructions stood outside the walls of private property on the roadside and these lie largely unattended.

Laxman Agarkar works clearing the familiar orange containers parked in sidestreets around the city. He has found that people are dumping piles of sodden carpet, tree branches and water damaged waste on the ground next to the container.

“We are supposed to empty only the container,” he said. “Sometimes there is so much rubbish around it, we can’t get to it to empty. The municipality should get teams out to clear this stuff.”

He pointed to a streetcorner in Al-Rawdah where the branches of several trees had been dumped, stretching some 30 meters along the roadside and into the traffic lanes of a busy crossroad.

Although the winter rainy season has begun, no further storms are forecast for the immediate future.