JEDDAH, 31 October 2006 — With an aim of minimizing the problems caused by flooding this year, Jeddah Municipality has created a committee that includes members of the traffic police, civil defense, the electricity company and the water and sewage department to pool in their resources to serve the city’s residents.
According to Faisal Shawli, secretary of the rain department at Jeddah Municipality, the new committee will operate until the city’s new drainage system is completely in place.
He said this committee has been created under the rain department that is chaired by Jeddah Mayor Adel Fakeih. The committee is presently studying ways of clearing roads from rainwater that inundate the streets in the event of a rainfall. A full drainage system is expected to come in place in a few years.
In order to drain the streets, the committee used 30 municipality water-trucks in addition to 70 hired trucks on Sunday, said Shawli, adding that yesterday the number of trucks had been increased to 300.
The municipality had a plan to clear the floodwater from main streets within seven hours of rainfall, 24 hours on side streets and 72 hours on open fields.
“Yesterday we managed to clear main roads in five hours while operating with only 100 trucks,” he said.
Shawli added that they managed to better organize the work this year by joining hands with other departments. He said the traffic police redirected traffic away from the flooded roads so that trucks could work without any disturbance. “This procedure helped minimize the time required to clear the roads,” he said.
He also added that this year, with the completion of around 30 percent of the drainage network, it was much easier to clean up roads. “Though the drainage network is only covering a small area of the city, it has helped a lot in decreasing the amount of floodwater compared to previous years,” he said.
“Every year we try to avoid past mistakes,” he said, adding, “We are confident that every thing would be under control during this rainy season.”
