Basra - Al-Forat
Heavy rain flooded streets and several neighbourhoods in Basra in the first strong downpour of the season, leaving water pooling on roads, disrupting traffic and delaying public employees on their way to work, as municipal crews, the Sewerage Directorate and Civil Defence mobilised to pump out water and reopen roads.
Al-Forat’s correspondent in Basra said the Hayyaniya, Jumhuriya, Khamsa Mil and Qibla neighbourhoods were the worst hit, with water in some side streets rising to more than 30 centimetres, while dirt roads on the city’s outskirts turned into pools of mud that were difficult to cross.
The Basra monitoring station recorded about 38 mm of rain within a few hours, according to the Iraqi Meteorological Organisation, which forecast more thunderstorms over southern areas along with a marked drop in temperatures.
Services on alert
The director of Basra’s Sewerage Directorate told Al-Forat that it had deployed more than 70 tankers to pump out water and was running pumping stations at full capacity. He said water was collecting in some neighbourhoods because the old networks were worn out and pipes were blocked by rubbish and construction debris, and because some areas still have no drainage network at all.
“Every year we hear the same promises, and with the first rain we are back in the mud. We want a sewerage network, not tankers”Kadhim Abdul-Hussein, a resident of Hayyaniya
For his part, the governor of Basra announced the formation of a crisis cell working round the clock to follow up on the affected neighbourhoods, and instructed service departments to cancel staff leave and unblock closed outlets in the drainage networks, saying the province’s stalled sewerage projects would top next year’s plan.
Warnings to residents
The Civil Defence Directorate urged residents to keep away from electricity poles and dangling cables, not to walk through flooded streets, and to report any water entering homes or any electrical short circuits on the published numbers, while mobile teams were assigned to help families in low-lying areas until the rain eases.
