(Dubai) Flooded highways, closed schools and disrupted air traffic and at least one death: Dubai struggled on Wednesday to recover from the record rains which fell the day before on the most famous of the seven city-states of the United Arab Emirates federation.
Despite the return of the sun, long queues formed on six-lane highways, some sections of which were still submerged, the Emirates having recorded 254 mm of rain in one day on Tuesday, the equivalent of almost two years of precipitation in this desert country.
At least one person died, a 70-year-old man whose car slid in the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, police said.
Taken by surprise by the torrential rains, a motorist whose 15-minute journey turned into a 12-hour epic on Tuesday said he was “very scared”.
“It was one of the most horrible situations I had ever experienced, because I knew that if my car broke down, it would sink and I would drown with it,” he told AFP, without wanting to give her name.
On Wednesday, some homes were still without power, while abandoned cars continued to float in certain neighborhoods still flooded with water.
The authorities announced the closure of schools all week, highlighting the difficulties of returning to normal.
Stuck for six hours in his car on Tuesday, an expatriate father in Dubai, who did not wish to be identified, said he understood “that the country is not equipped to receive such rain. But I am disappointed by the lack of transparency and information on the situation in real time.”
“Very difficult conditions”
After the cancellation and diversion of dozens of flights the day before, travelers were asked on Wednesday not to go to Dubai airport, the busiest in the world in terms of international traffic, “unless absolutely necessary.” need “.
“Flights continue to be delayed and diverted (…) We are working hard to restore operations as quickly as possible in very difficult conditions,” said a spokesperson for Dubai Airports.
The airline Emirates, the flagship of the emirate, has suspended check-ins due to difficulties in accessing the airport for staff and passengers, with roads still blocked and some metro services suspended.
Long queues formed outside airport taxi ranks, while many passengers inside waited for news of their flights in complete confusion.
“It’s complete chaos, no information, nothing,” fumed one passenger, while a crowd gathered in front of an information desk clapped and whistled in protest.
The storm hit the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain overnight from Monday to Tuesday, after hitting Oman, another Gulf country, where 18 people, including several children, were killed.
Rainfall in the United Arab Emirates is the heaviest ever recorded in the country since records began in 1949, according to authorities.
For Friederike Otto, lecturer in climate sciences at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, “the deadly and destructive rains in Oman and Dubai” were probably accentuated by “man-made climate change”.
“Desert lands need more time than others for water to infiltrate. The amount of rain that fell was too much to absorb,” said Maryam Al Shehhi of the National Meteorological Center, assuring that the country had not resorted to cloud seeding.
This technology, often used in the country to generate artificial rain, was not deployed because the storm “was already strong”, she said.
Schools will also remain closed until next week in Bahrain, which recorded record one-day rainfall of 96.88 mm on Tuesday, beating the 67.9 mm recorded in 1995.
reference: www.lapresse.ca