The heavy rains this month left an estimated 12 people dead in Jeddah including a Yemeni man and an Indonesian worker who were electrocuted when they touched a lamppost.
I suppose the fact that only a dozen people lost their lives during this rainfall season so far should be considered a good thing given the tragedies that occurred some years ago when the number of dead in Jeddah due to flooding was 10 times the number this year.
The two men who died, however, received little notice though it should be a big deal. We are a society that likes new things: New buildings equipped with modern technology with new architectural designs. We build these structures fast and rent them out or sell office spaces just as fast. We make a lot of money from commercial and residential tenants.
But we rarely spend the time and money for maintenance and we rarely consider just how poor is our infrastructure. Try, for a moment, to consider those two men who died while standing at a lamppost in the middle of a heavy rain. When people leave their homes there is an assumption that sidewalks will provide pedestrians safe passages from Point A to Point B, the street lamps will provide lighting and the traffic signals will control traffic. If rainfall hits a neighborhood then the curbs, gutters and drainage system will handle the water flow to prevent flooding.
However, the rain continues to expose our flaws in construction and the lack of maintenance. The only way the streetlamp that electrocuted the two men could have become electrified is due to exposed wiring or an unsealed box containing the wiring harness. Any regular walker in Jeddah will tell you that exposed wiring in streetlamps and power boxes are ubiquitous in the city. Equally troubling is that workers leave manhole covers loose and street repair projects remain unfinished for months exposing people living in these neighborhoods to danger.
Recognizing a poorly executed construction project is easy. Ill-fitting doors, loose or uneven floor tiles and exposed wiring for light fixtures are fairly standard in residential apartments. Further, apartment owners have not adopted a standard funding procedure for maintenance of buildings such as deducting money from rent or establishing some type of homeowners association fees earmarked for upkeep. Instead, once a building owner completes construction on a project, maintenance is rarely a consideration.
By ignoring the upkeep of a building, or for that matter, the upkeep of sidewalks, gutters and public spaces, the builders and the owners continue to put the public in harm’s way. Saudi Arabia’s year-round weather conditions are particularly tough on infrastructure. Without government rules and regulations to guarantee that the public safety is a consideration when constructing a building and then seeing that building is maintained, users will always be at risk. Builders, once they complete a project, are under no obligation to protect tenants. They are not held accountable for leaky roofs or electrical malfunctions that place the people they serve in danger.
As a country with the amount of wealth we have at our disposal there is no excuse for lagging far behind other nations in ensuring public safety through well-built infrastructure and proper maintenance. Without establishing a high bar in construction standards and subsequent infrastructure maintenance we will consistently see men and women needlessly die while standing on street corners.
