JEDDAH: The Civil Defense said on Saturday that the death toll from the Nov. 25 flash flooding in Jeddah stands at 122 with 37 missing.
Brig. Muhammad Al-Qarni, director of the department’s media center, said the committee in charge of assessing damages caused by the flood found 3,861 houses not fit for living.
He also said that the Ministry of Finance had distributed financial aid to 2,800 families during the past week. Al-Qarni also called on people volunteering help to provide to the concerned authorities the number of furnished apartments that accommodated 2,500 families that lost their homes because of the floods.
“Some owners of the furnished apartments in Yanbu offered houses to flood victims free of charge. These noble feelings are not alien to the citizens of this country,” said Al-Qarni. He added that more than 400 volunteers from different organizations have served the people of Jeddah and that they deserve to be honored.
Meanwhile, Abdullatif Niamatullah, head of the Department of the Environment at King Abdulaziz University, said that Civil Defense officers are likely to find the bodies of more victims in affected areas by using advanced equipment.
“The quick detection of bodies depends on the use of advanced technology, information about where they disappeared as well as the number of teams working to find them,” he said, adding that the floodwaters might have taken some bodies to sea.
Niamatullah opposed the quick implementation of projects to contain floods, adding that the negative effects of such projects would appear later. He stressed the need for establishing an adequate number of water treatment facilities in every city.
— Input from Md. Al-Sulami
