Besieged by a flooded street, Ahmad Al-Maliki needed to go to work but could not reach his car at his first attempt in the Al-Naseem District Wednesday. “It became clear I was going to be late for work,” he said. Al-Maliki, 33, who works as a cashier for a Jeddah superstore, rolled up his thobe and waded through the dirty brown water to reach his car. The 8km commute to work took Al-Maliki about 30 minutes because the streets were heavily flooded and crowded with vehicles moving at a snail's pace. People were doing their last minute shopping for Eid which starts Friday. The street intersections were chaotic as traffic lights kept flashing yellow. “I came late, but my boss understood because he was also late because of the rain,” Al-Maliki said. Inside the store there were many captive shoppers who waited for the rain to stop. “The more they remained inside the store, the more they filled up their carts,” Al-Maliki said. Some said they feared the drive back home because of the danger posed by the flooded streets. “How can you drive on such bad streets? This has been going on for ages now and nothing is really being done about it,” said Omar Khatab, a holiday shopper. “It rarely rains in Jeddah, and when it does, this is what you get,” he said. Some joked about the aging city's troubles. “Do we really need to go to the beach this weekend? The beach has come to us,” said Firas Batterjee, a bank employee. “This is becoming more like Venice, but in an ugly way. I thought we would only use our boat anchored at the beach for a ride on the Red Sea, but now we may need it for Jeddah's streets,” said Abdulkareem Al-Jabrii, another bank employee. The city has had a poor drainage system for the last two decades and this has made people apprehensive every time it rains. With traffic jams created by flooding streets and blocked flood networks and canals, the city can only pump the rainwater from the streets; a job that takes a few days. The swamps created in districts like Bani Malik, Al-Jamia, Al-Nuzlah, Al-Safa, Al-Naseem, and others take up to two weeks to dry up. Besides emitting unbearably nasty smells, these swamps create the conditions for an outbreak of dengue fever, said one neighbor of Al-Maliki. “We have lost hope of getting the situation fixed. All you see (these days) are heavy machines and the never-ending digging up of the streets,” the old neighbor said. Eng. Ayman Al-Zahrani, Director of Operations at Jeddah Mayoralty, has reportedly said the city's operation room receives about 750 calls during rainy days from residents reporting that they are besieged by floods, pointing out that reports show the southern part of the coastal city is the most severely affected. The Jeddah Mayoralty said earlier this year it was preparing five “big” studies on ways to improve the rainwater drainage system. At least 11 small rivers from the east flow into the city when it rains, complicating the flooding situation, a mayoralty statement said.
