DUBAI // A swift response by municipality engineers in clearing 16 million gallons of floodwater helped to minimise the damage caused after a main water pipe burst near Discovery Gardens.
The pipe burst on Thursday night flooding roads and car parks behind the China court section of Ibn Battuta Mall and the Gardens. Pavements were damaged and cars were stuck.
Hassan Makki, Dubai Municipality’s director of Sewerage and Irrigation Network department, who led the recovery operation, said: “We deployed our action team to carry out operations according to the emergency plan we follow to tackle such circumstances.
“Our team started action at 1am on Friday with eight tankers and pump sets and worked 15 hours continuously.”
The response teams drained close to 75,000 cubic metres of water – about 16 million gallons.
The eight tankers have a loading capacity of 5,000 gallons and removed 3,211 loads of water during the emergency, said Mr Makki.
The cooperation between different government departments as well as the emergency services has been praised.
“In such situations actions should be well coordinated and organised in order to make it fast and effective,” said Redha Salman, director of the Public Health and Safety Department at Dubai Municipality.
“This is what is meant by the emergency and crisis plan and coordination between Dubai government bodies headed by the police department. In many cases, our approved action plan was proven to be effective.”
A video of the flooding captured by a witness and posted on YouTube showed torrents of fast moving water flowing along a street. People who left cars near the mall’s cinema car park were forced to abandon their vehicles overnight.
Police and the Roads and Transport Authority had to close roads and imposed diversions, which led to gridlocked traffic in Discovery Gardens for days afterwards.
Exit 27 off Sheikh Zayed Road into Discovery Gardens was closed for more than 48 hours forcing motorists into long lines of traffic at exit 25.
The water also seeped into a power generator causing an explosion and fire. However, the blaze was quickly brought under control and police said there were no injuries.
Nakheel, the developer of Discovery Gardens and Ibn Battuta Mall, said water supplies to the mall were briefly affected for a few hours on Friday but were then fully restored.
It added that repairs teams were still working to clear up the debris and sand left behind by the flood.
nhanif@thenational.ae
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Paatal Lok season two
Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy
Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong
Rating: 4.5/5
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
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Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
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Sheikh Zayed's poem
When it is unveiled at Abu Dhabi Art, the Standing Tall exhibition will appear as an interplay of poetry and art. The 100 scarves are 100 fragments surrounding five, figurative, female sculptures, and both sculptures and scarves are hand-embroidered by a group of refugee women artisans, who used the Palestinian cross-stitch embroidery art of tatreez. Fragments of Sheikh Zayed’s poem Your Love is Ruling My Heart, written in Arabic as a love poem to his nation, are embroidered onto both the sculptures and the scarves. Here is the English translation.
Your love is ruling over my heart
Your love is ruling over my heart, even a mountain can’t bear all of it
Woe for my heart of such a love, if it befell it and made it its home
You came on me like a gleaming sun, you are the cure for my soul of its sickness
Be lenient on me, oh tender one, and have mercy on who because of you is in ruins
You are like the Ajeed Al-reem [leader of the gazelle herd] for my country, the source of all of its knowledge
You waddle even when you stand still, with feet white like the blooming of the dates of the palm
Oh, who wishes to deprive me of sleep, the night has ended and I still have not seen you
You are the cure for my sickness and my support, you dried my throat up let me go and damp it
Help me, oh children of mine, for in his love my life will pass me by.
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