Jeddah's amazing flood 26 January 2011

I love rain. I love it when it rains. But this is really something different. Jeddah have been experiencing sporadic raining for several days now and today was the worst. It started in the morning around 10 or 11 am and soon after the streets were flooded. Until around 2 pm.. I decided to go home and I knew for a fact that I will have to walk all the way to my house as both Siteen Street and Madinah Road is expectedly flooded.

Thank God there is IKEA plastic back to cover my head.. although I was wet from the rain from the chest down, I was able to keep my head and my hair dry and comfy with the IKEA plastic bag.
However, everything took me by surprise. I was just expecting maximum knee high waters, but that I already got on the corner of Madinah Road and Tahlia street. Upon going through that, I knew I will be in for greater surprise.

Traffic was already building up close to the Baladia wooden bridge and you can see that a lot of cars including big trucks and bus were not moving. Things went from worse to worst... a few hundred meters approaching Palestine Street corner Madinah Road, everything just came crystal clear.. this is no ordinary flood, and it was no ordinary rain.

Near the Ministry of Interior, cars were already left by their owners with alarms set off by water inside them. The traffic has come to a virtual stop. Nobody can pass by this place as water have gone to waist deep. WAIST DEEP...........

Onwards to Balad, the water would only be down a few inches but maintained above knee deep.

I had to navigate in and out of smaller streets, I realized that Madinah Road is lower as the water is cascading with strong currents towards it so I had to find my way away from it.

Alhamdulillah got inside those smaller parallel streets to Khalid Bin Waleed, but not after I accidentaly submerged myself from head to toe!!!!!!

This is after a small incident I had with a Yemeni guy sitting on the side of a big mosque, who I accidentaly wet a bit as I steppeed on a puddle.. he shouted "esh shada.. mafi shoof???" (you didn't see?".. I apologized, but it seems the man had already cursed me with his amazing evil eye... not a second after that, I find myself with a painful leg cramp and all wet... honestly, I thought I was going to be swept by the current.... That I think was my real life encounter with someone with an evil eye.

Anyway, after 3 painful hours of continous walking, I finally got home at 5:30 after leaving the office at 2:30 pm. The underpass in Wali Al Ahd streets were full to the brim again, there were some helicopters hovering above, I supposed from the police to assess the situation.

Traffic was lighter in the inner streets with shallower flooding.

So many students are stuck in their school premises unable to go home. A lot of workers caught stranded also in strange places...

I heard from a friend that there were some portions of Siteen street with chest deep water. My friend and her husband is now staying on the 2nd floor of their home near Abu Sinada hospital as flood water have gone to as high as shoulder deep - totally damaging their properties on the 1st floor of the house.

At the end of the day, we can only say.. Alhamdulillah.. it could have been worse.