The mayoralty recently signed a contract with an engineering firm to submit architectural engineering reports for more than 1,000 old buildings feared to be in danger of collapsing in Al-Suhaifa, Al-Ammaria and Al-Baghdadeyah Al-Sharkeyah districts near the Al-Balad area of the city. “We have received more than 72 calls concerning buildings that have collapsed in that area since the beginning of this year,” said Khaled Zainy, director general of the emergency department and the general coordinator of the committee concerned with dilapidated buildings at Jeddah municipality. He added that the 1,000 buildings are considered to be dangerous as they are expected to fall due to the lack of maintenance by their owners. The mayoralty is attempting to find solutions for the increased number of collapsed buildings in the old districts of the Bride of the Red Sea, and according to the terms of the recently signed contract, the engineering firm has to deliver at least two reports daily about the condition of old buildings and submit them immediately by means of a computerized system to the responsible department of the mayoralty. “Despite the current hot weather in Jeddah, we submit more than 55 reports a week on the architectural condition of old buildings via the computerized system of the municipality,” said construction engineer Mohammad Ali Yousef, chairman of the board of the contracted engineering firm. The architectural engineers are making use of a special mobile lab with different analytical devices which allow them to send their reports to the mayoralty directly from the inspection site. The lab is used to check the architectural condition of old buildings in order to determine if they require maintenance or if they have reached the end of their life span and need to be demolished. “We have provided this lab to make the job easier for our engineers. The lab cost more than one million riyals and contains the most modern architectural engineering devices,” Yousef said. “It has ultrasound for testing the condition of concrete and reinforcing steel, a device for breaking and analyzing concrete samples, in addition to others which perform chemical tests,” he explained. Low-income African and Asian workers live in these old buildings because the owners have moved to newer districts of the city, renting out their old buildings cheaply in order to have a fixed monthly income. Although the mayoralty committee puts stickers on old buildings to order their owners to immediately contact the responsible department, officials face the problem of owners not responding or even removing the stickers in an attempt to deceive the authorities. “If we attach a sticker to an old building today, we are unlikely to find it there tomorrow,” Zainy told Saudi Gazette. “We have informed the owners of old buildings of the danger to those who live in them, because many of these structures are expected to fall at any time. However, most of these owners do not take the issue seriously,” he said. He added that some of the old buildings belong to Saudis, some to foreigners and that there are other buildings whose owners are unknown. “The committee members have tried many times to find the owners of these building, but have been unable to do so,” he said.
