JEDDAH, 29 April 2005 — Five people were killed as unseasonal heavy rains and a hailstorm hit Jeddah yesterday. It was the heaviest rains in the city for 10 years according to the weather department.
At five o’clock in the morning, the skies opened and the biggest storm dealt Jeddah a sledgehammer blow. High winds howled through the streets, driving the rain and hail through windows, peppering aluminum structures with myriads of dents and tearing down advertising hoardings and fences.
Power lines were laid low and septic tanks overflowed. Hailstones, some over 20 mm in diameter, littered the street as daylight broke over the devastation. Visibility was reduced to a few feet for the best part of an hour until the main force of the storm was spent. In its wake it left many main roads half a meter deep in water and many side streets in suburban Jeddah all but impassable until late in the day.
Debris washed from construction sites and over the downed perimeter fences added to the hazards for motorists trying to get to work in the morning. Broken pallets with protruding nails proved particularly threatening, causing punctures and bringing vehicles to a halt, compounding already hazardous conditions.
None of the deaths were in road accidents, all of which were mainly vehicle-only damage. Four of those killed died when a building collapsed in Al-Muntazahat District. Three of them were Chadians and one was a Nigerian. An Egyptian died when a restaurant selling traditional food collapsed in Nuzhla Yamania District.
Civil Defense teams worked throughout the day responding to emergency calls by people who had their homes flooded and to others from people trapped inside cars.
Jeddah Municipality mobilized more than 300 heavy trucks to pump water from flooded streets and roundabouts as traffic came to a standstill in many parts of the city. The trucks concentrated their work throughout the day on the main streets and will later move to side streets where many neighborhoods remained under water.
The damage to vehicles could have been heavier had yesterday not been an official holiday with government offices and schools closed. Traffic was light in the early hours of the morning. A committee coordinating several government bodies has been set up to help those affected by the rains and to decide the kind of assistance to be extended to the victims. Abdul Aziz Al-Ghamdi of the municipality heads the panel.
On Madinah Road and Tahlia Street, large advertising hoardings that had been flattened by the high winds had to be re-erected or removed; mobile cranes straddled the carriageways and slowed the traffic for much of the day. The inundation caused long delays in commuting and traffic snarlups stretching several kilometers built up on Madinah Road. One motorist, a country manager for a security firm, reported taking two and a half hours to drive the few kilometers from Al-Mohammadeyah to Palestine Street, a journey of 20 minutes or so under normal conditions.
By the evening, the majority of main thoroughfares were clear with traffic moving almost as normal, although some smaller residential side streets were still flooded.
