Category Archives: Constructions in Saudi

Banking, Real Estate…

Riyadh Rain: Granada Oasis & Mall (Drainage System)

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Gandara Mall

Granada Mall & Oasis (Business Park) are located on the north east side of Riyadh, specifically, on the East Ring Road of Riyadh city.

However, that area has three other key projects, two are still under construction, but the mall is on business now.

The 830 Hilton hotel and Granada Oasis are supposed to be finalized sometimes within three years.

The Oasis construction project which is just right next to the mall will cost approximately USD 411,000,000 (SAR 1.5 billion) owned by GOSI (General Organization for Social Insurance).

The capacity of that project is about 131,151 sq. m. of size and contracted by Al Latifia Trading and Contracting.

The exact completion of that project is to be by the end of 2011 & scope of their work will be the as follows:

  • 6 high rise towers (17 to 20 storeys)
  • 4 medium rise office buildings
  • Residential villas
  • A 2 storey conference center
  • Meeting halls.

Continue reading →

Riyadh Flood: Jeddah You’re Not Alone!

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King Fahad Road

It was a lovely morning, May the 3rd of 2010 partially cloudy and little breezy to the extent that you would consider striking a plan for camping on that day.

However, part of the plan, you will check the weather advisory by local official authorities (Department of Civil Defense for example) whether or not proceeding with the plan would be safe!

Just similarly to what happened in Jeddah last year, neither Saudi Department of Civil Defense or PME (Saudi Meteorology & Environment Authority) had announced any advisory to local people in Riyadh alerting them about a potential heavy rain!

Again, some would argue that it is not quite suitable that they will announce this immediately.

Yet, my argument would be, it is not logical that Riyadh never expected such a heavy rain, and I would be looking at www.weather.com all the time!

I have been always very appreciable to technology, so I checked www.accuweather.com for weather forecast and found possible striking of thunderstorm.  Therefore, I seriously advise our Civil Defense & PME (Saudi Meteorology & Environment Authority) to stay in touch with AccuWeather for any free climate update!

Saudi Meteorology Authority

Anyhow, It has been such a busy period lately, however, the tons of images that I have receive and still being received up to now led me crack my fingers like Continue reading →

Jeddah Disaster: A Clip Collections!

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Car drown by Rain!

Car drown by Rain!

My Jeddawie friend (Mohammad) likes to keep me updated with his latest in term of images nor clips of what happened in Jeddah since he is in the heart of the situation. Yet, he sent the most stunning clip out of YouTube.

It is the most horrific clips yet that I’ve seen and received for this disaster.

Basically, It consists of a collection of clips merged together to be a single clip for almost 8.30 minutes.

It shows people and cars Continue reading →

Riyadh Rain: Reasonable Damages!

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Exit 15 Top View

Exit 15 Top View (East Ring Road Highway)

So lets move on to Riyadh, as the clouds have been traveling east side of the Saudi semi-peninsula. Riyadh started getting some rain but intermittently, sometimes showering and other times are heavy. Luckily, I was able to take some images but haven’t downloaded them into my laptop yet. Anyhow, there were damages to some of the roads infrastructure and some bridges were flooded, but I appreciate the preventive measures that the Traffic Police (Al-Muroor) and Civil Defense (Al-Defa’a Al-Madani) that they took once the rain started. They blocked ways to these flooded area to preventive people from driving nor walking through and provided the vacuum tanks to clean these flooded roads as soon as possible.

I am still wondering what would happen if Riyadh was Rio De Janeiro, and these corrupted contractors  Continue reading →

Jeddah Disaster: Musk Lake!

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mesklake2

Musk Lake in Jeddah

Musk Lake, is where all the sewage water at Jeddah get dumped at. Ironically, the sewage dumpster named Musk Lake by Jeddah people. I have done some Google search to share some data in English concerning this potential disaster that might collapse anytime these days as a consequence of the recent rainfall.

The lake is located 40 km on the eastern side of Jeddah, extending from the Breiman bridge toward Mekkah. Exactly, 17 kilometers away from that Breiman bridge. The lake size is relatively huge as some of the resources mentioned and it could cause a massive impact beyond what was caused by the recent rain. Roughly, 1200 trailers dump a sewage water everyday which makes the lake extend its size dramatically. The lake contains over 10 million cubic meters of the sewage water as stated on article published by Arab News.

An article was written by Saudi Gazette today 30 Nov., 2009 the Saudi English Continue reading →

Jeddah Rain: KAU Hospital Images!

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Nurse with two children in packet

Up to date, the most shocking images have been received on the consequence of the recent rainfall that damaged Jeddah infrastructure. I was debating whether to continue posting them or not but I had to share it which I think is the least thing I can do to these people.

Dr. Omar Rosey was one the of these doctors who was working night shift when the rainfall occurred at King Abdulaziz University Hospital which is managed and operated by the university.

The images show that the hospital is not capable of facing such a disaster and even their server seems Continue reading →

Rain Disaster: Reaches KAUST!

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KAUST Damages. Image by Dan

Recently, King Abdullah has unleashed the new Technology and Science university at Thawal near Jeddah. The university was built to be the leading university and research center in the region at several scientific fields. The heavy rain fall that happened lately has reached KAUST which impacted some of the university’s facilities. Images within this post explain more on how the university was effected and raised a very important question, Do they have at least a disaster recovery plan for the Shaheen the supercomputer center at KAUST?

The Shaheen supercomputer ranked as the 14th supercomputer center in the world. Unfortunately, Continue reading →