The situation is still very difficult in Dubai. Flooded highways, closed schools and disrupted air traffic: the city struggled on Wednesday to recover from the record rains which fell the day before in several Gulf countries.
Despite the return of the sun, long queues formed on six-lane highways, some sections of which were still submerged, as the United Arab Emirates recorded 254 millimeters of rain in one day on Tuesday, the equivalent of almost two years of precipitation in this desert country.
“It’s complete chaos”
After the cancellation and diversion of dozens of flights the day before, travelers were invited on Wednesday not to go to Dubai airport, the busiest in the world in terms of international traffic, “unless absolutely necessary.” need “. Emirates airline has suspended check-ins due to difficulties accessing the airport, with roads still blocked and some metro services suspended.
Long queues also formed outside airport taxi ranks, while passengers inside waited for news of their flights. “It’s complete chaos, no information, nothing,” one of them fumed, while a crowd gathered in front of an information desk whistled in protest.
At least one dead in the Emirates
In the emirate of Ras al-Khaimah, at least one person died, a 70-year-old man whose car was swept away by the waters.
In a televised intervention, the President of the Emirates, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, ordered the authorities to “quickly examine the state of infrastructure across the country and limit the damage caused”. He also asked that families whose homes were affected by bad weather be housed in safe places.
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.
Climate change singled out
The storm hit the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain on Monday and Tuesday, after hitting Oman, another Gulf country, where 19 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.
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.
For Friederike Otto, lecturer in climate sciences at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London, these “deadly and destructive rains” were probably accentuated by “man-made climate change”.