Jeddah floods recede, sewage lake still threatens
By Asma Alsharif, JEDDAH
Mon Dec 7, 2009 7:07am EST JEDDAH (Reuters) – Standing in brown sludge outside his house in Jeddah, Qassim Mohsin still gasps at the power of the flash floods that churned through the Saudi port city on the Red Sea 10 days ago, killing at least 116 people. “We climbed to our roof and saw things we only see on television in other countries. Cars were rolling around in the water as if they were in a blender,” said the Yemeni resident of the Quwaiza district, where flood waters rose over three meters. The torrent swept away most of Mohsin’s belongings, leaving him only a useless heap of soggy furniture and electrical goods. Saudi civil defense forces are still rummaging through the debris, tallying the damage and searching for more bodies. They say the floods damaged 8,092 homes and crushed 7,143 vehicles in the worst natural disaster anyone in Jeddah can recall. The destructive surge of water was a swift sequel to torrential rains, rare in the desert kingdom, that hit Jeddah and the rocky mountains that fringe its coastal plain. … [T]he lack of an underground sewage system remains a glaring infrastructural defect. Jeddah’s most urgent challenge is to relieve pressure on an artificial lake east of the city, dubbed Musk Lake, used to dump sewage for more than 10 years. The sewage lake has risen to alarming depths of 15 meters. If its embankments were to give way, a deluge of toxic wastewater could inundate parts of the city. …
