Unexpected power cuts for several hours Wednesday left many people trapped in elevators in at least nine Jeddah districts, according to authorities. The outage primarily affected Prince Fawaz District, southwest of Jeddah, where most of the trapped cases were reported, said Captain Abdullah Al-Ammri, spokesman for the Jeddah Civil Defense. Other districts of Al-Haramain, Al-Qurrayyat, Al-Baghdadiya, Ghulail, Safa, Quwaiza, Ajwad, and Al-Iskan Al-Janoubi also experienced the impact of the outage. The cause of the outage was not immediately known. Rescue teams were dispatched to Al-Haramain District known for its tall residential buildings with turbo elevators where passengers were trapped when the power failed. Emergency lines at the Saudi Electricity Company in Jeddah could not be contacted with callers receiving busy signals. “The whole family called the emergency lines of the power company, but they were always busy,” said Khaled Al-Shahrani. In previous years, Jeddah has been hit by many power outages with no prior notice. “When these kinds of things happen, business suffers. It has caused damage to the central cooling system in my shop which will end up costing me a whopping SR60,000. I will gather evidence against the power company and sue them,” said a shop owner in Ajwad district, Saeed Al-Otaibi. Hamoud Al-Bugami, a resident of the affected district, said: “We have had enough in our lives, and now the power outage. Everything around us seems to be more of a burden than anything else. Enough!”
