Main sewers were overwhelmed; heavy manhole covers lifted and foul-smelling water and sewage spewed into the roads. At many junctions traffic lights failed and the potential for chaos was high.
The head of the Meteorology Department at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Mansour Al-Mazrouei, told Arab News that Jeddah received 41.7 mm of rainfall. The average amount of rain during the winter months (November to January) is about 51 mm. Jeddah received 90 mm of rain in the Nov. 25, 2009 flash floods.
The heavy rains swamped large areas in the districts of Samir, Ajawd, Braiman, Al-Safa, Al-Nahda and Al-Rehaili. On the other hand the southern and south eastern Jeddah including Sawaed, Harazat, Quwaizah and Kilo14 experienced moderate to light showers.
This time, local officials were prepared.
Civil Defense teams using rubber boats and heavy equipment focused mainly in areas prone to flooding such as the neighborhoods in the east of the Haramain Expressway that were inundated in the 2009 floods.
Jeddah municipality officials readied 100 pumping and drainage trucks to undertake emergency operations. They also reopened underpasses in Samir and Ajwad districts that are prone to flooding.
Hajar village in the city’s outskirts were cut off and the wadi located there was filled with rainwater draining to the Red Sea near Rabigh.
Roads at King Abdullah University for Science and Technology in Thuwal were also submerged.
People in Al-Qadimah town saw damage to a bridge. Many travelers from Jeddah to Rabigh had to return to Jeddah because of the rains.
To reduce road traffic, the Ministry of Education ordered schools closed for Saturday. Parents of pupils got telephone calls late into the night on Friday and learned of the decision.
The move proved to be a wise one, with the volume of traffic reduced to weekend levels or less on Saturday as students stayed home.
The director of Education in Jeddah, Abdullah Al-Thaqfi, said road traffic needed to be reduced to make it easier for workers to rmitigate the flooding. Jeddah lacks an adequate drainage system to cope with the rare downpour, requiring municipal workers to remove water manually.
Teachers and students in schools north of Leeth city, locate to the south of Jeddah, could not go to their schools because of flooded wadis in the area. There were also power failures in some places.
At the British School in Jeddah which was open as normal, teachers acted as ad hoc traffic marshals as the press of vehicles was directed to alternative drop-off points. It was a little knot of chaos in an otherwise moderately free running morning.
There were also noticeably fewer broken down cars littering the streets, perhaps because drivers are getting used to driving in unusually wet
conditions.