MADINAH: The Civil Defense teams undertaking awareness campaigns about safety measures at times of natural calamities in and around remote villages in Madinah province, where mild tremors measuring up to 3.3 on the Richter scale were registered, were appalled by the lukewarm response of some local residents.
The Civil Defense teams noticed that many people either carried on their normal lives without attending the speeches and demonstration classes conducted by the teams on safety precautions.
“Instead, young men continued playing football and other games as usual, laborers did not care to stop their work and listen, and elderly people continued sipping qahwa and smoking sheesha without bothering to listen to the safety teams,” Al-Watan newspaper reported yesterday.
The campaigns and precautionary measures are being undertaken in Al-Ais and Bahrat Al-Shaqqah, about 240 km northwest of Madinah, and adjacent villages after a series of tremors hit the area recently.
Gen. Saleh Al-Muhawwas, head of the Civil Defense in Madinah, said Civil Defense teams were visiting villages in the area to inform residents about necessary precautions they need to take in the event of natural disasters. He denied reports that villagers were indifferent to the awareness campaigns.
Al-Muhawwas said that his department was fully equipped and prepared for any emergency. He said 2,000 emergency shelters have been readied for an estimated 60,000 people living in the earthquake-prone area, which is full of extinct volcanoes.
Ali Hersan, an elderly resident of Al-Ais, said bedouins in desert villages are better skilled in sensing natural calamities in advance than the newfangled devices.
“Bedouins sense an impending volcano or earthquake by observing the behavior of animals, birds and insects,” Hersan told Al-Watan. “Birds, especially doves, hovering in the sky at odd hours and their refusal to return to nests or sit on building tops are signs of underground volcanic activity.”
Another sign is agitated behavior by animals, particularly rabbits and other desert fauna. The villagers believe that cattle refusing to enter their pens and running in different directions without any particular provocation portended some natural calamity, Hersan said.
