Speaking to Al-Madinah newspaper in a report published on Tuesday, Abdul Aziz Al-Zahrani said the traffic police had not taken any “practical measures to secure safety on roads, the thing that impeded traffic and caused damage to a large number of vehicles.” He said that 9,766 vehicles had either been damaged or completely destroyed.

“The traffic police should have diverted traffic away from the affected roads through making alternative routes on side streets in coordination with other concerned departments,” he told the newspaper, pointing out that local police did not attempt to divert traffic away from Haramain Expressway, which became gridlocked, forcing many to flee their vehicles on the highway.

He also said local police are not adequately equipped with vehicles that can maneuver during floods, leaving their sedans and motorbikes at the same mercy as those of civilians. He also said the police were unable to remove vehicles during the emergency because the municipality depends wholly on private companies for tow services, companies that didn’t want to put their trucks at risk during the floods.

As a whole, the Civil Defense official said local traffic police are thoroughly unprepared for such emergency situations, and that emergency responders do no have a protocol or the equipment for communicating among each other during times of crisis.

Al-Zahrani is scheduled to speak on the subject on Wednesday (today) regarding the emergency response to the flooding at a seminar in Prince Naif Arab University for Security Studies in Riyadh.