RIYADH (Middle East Eye) – Sajin Saleem was returning home to Saudi Arabia’s Jeddah from Qatar where he was attending a World Cup match.
Arriving at King Abdulaziz Airport as heavy rain flooded the coastal city on Thursday, he waited for hours to get a taxi but to no avail.
In the end, he was given a ride by another traveler driving back from the airport, who dropped Saleem off 6km from his home as the car couldn’t drive further due to the high water levels.
Wading through knee-deep water and carrying his luggage over his head, Saleem finally made it home.
No damage was caused by the floodwater to his fifth-floor flat, but his brand-new Chinese-made Changan car, parked on the ground floor, was submerged in mud that filled it up to the steering wheel.
As Jeddah residents slowly recover from the record flash flood - which resulted from 179 millimeters of rainfall - many like Saleem are struggling to get their vehicles up and running again in a city that has no effective public transport system.
The devastating flash floods on Thursday left two people dead and a scene of widespread damage to public properties and vehicles.
Footage shared on social media showed hundreds of cars floating, ramming into others, drowning in caved-in roads, and getting their engines and interiors smeared with thick mud.
While figures on the damage have not been announced yet, a 2015 study on two similar, previous floods in November 2009 and January 2011 found that more than 10,000 homes and 17,000 vehicles had been devastated by the two events combined.
After dawn on Thursday, warehouse supervisor Shaji Parappanadan set off for work in Kumra in south Jeddah from his residence in the al-Sharafiyah district.
“The weather was cloudy, and then it rained. I thought I wouldn’t make it to work, but I did,” Parappanadan told Middle East Eye.
After a brief lull, it rained heavily again, and at around 1:30 pm local time, his manager told him to ride back home in the company’s Toyota Dyna as his small car might drown.
“It took three hours, as vehicles moved slowly, anticipating cave-ins on the road as we saw submerged trailers on the way,” he said.
Early shift workers had reached their offices before their managers told them to work from home, and they were stuck in offices as they couldn’t risk taking their cars.
“Late-goers stuck on the road on their way to work. Some workers didn’t reach their residences even after midnight. Many workers slept in their warehouses,” Parappanadan explained.