Lebanon storms cause floods and power cuts

Weather again exposes crumbling infrastructure

Lightning strikes off the coast of northern Lebanon on November 25, 2020 as the country experiences stormy weather with the onset of winter. AFP

The weakness of Lebanon's infrastructure was laid bare again on Saturday after heavy rain flooded highways and lightning struck four high-voltage lines, causing power cuts across the country.

A video of a torrent of muddy water sweeping a delivery man off his scooter went viral on Twitter under the hashtag “Lebanon is sinking”.

But many social media users also noted with grim humour that flooding was a recurring problem that successive governments failed to address.

“The 2nd most predictably recurring event in the modern history of Lebanon," tweeted local newspaper director Michel Helou alongside a video of a flooded tunnel in Jounieh, a densely populated area north of Beirut.

“The 1st one being my Teta asking me if I’m hungry,” he added, using the local word for grandmother.

After the 1975-1990 civil war, Lebanon received millions in loans and grants from international donors to rebuild its infrastructure. But governments, widely accused of incompetence and corruption, have done a poor job of maintaining the country's roads and electricity network.

“We were happy to claim that we were spending money on upgrading infrastructure but very little was spent on maintenance,” said Nadim Farajalla, director of the climate change and environment programme at the Issam Fares institute at the American University of Beirut.

Dr Farajalla said he remembered cars floating in water on the Zalka highway north of Beirut in 1999.

"The only thing that was worse this year was the amount of rain that fell," he told The National.

Quoting the meteorological department at Beirut's international airport, the Ministry of Public Works said on Saturday that 30 millimetres of rain fell on Jounieh in less than an hour, and that 12mm fell in the southern suburbs of the capital.

According to Dr Farajalla, this was equivalent to roughly 5 per cent of the usual annual rainfall.

“That’s a huge amount of rain,” he said.

The ministry said its technical teams had unblocked drainage pipes near most motorways by mid-afternoon on Saturday.

The Lebanese government oversees maintenance of drainage on the networks of the country's main motorways. Municipalities look after secondary roads.
"If municipalities cannot handle it, the government must work with them. There should be an integrated management system where they work together to reduce this run-off," said Dr Farajalla.

The public works ministry alleged that some of the videos shared on social media were old or fabricated.

Some social media users responded by tweeting photo montages of the Titanic sinking in a flooded highway.

To make matters worse, Lebanon has been suffering for over a year from its worst economic crisis yet and has not had a fully functioning government since the Cabinet resigned in the wake of a deadly explosion at Beirut port in August.

In addition to floods, large areas of Lebanon were plunged into darkness on Saturday evening after four electric lines were downed by lightning.

"This is not the major concern. It can happen anywhere in the world," Jessica Obeid, Beirut-based independent energy consultant, told The National. "What is more worrying is that we cannot invest in maintaining the grid anymore."

On Friday, the director of one of the state's contractors, Butec Utility Services (BUS), claimed that the national electricity company Electricité du Liban had not paid it in more than a year. The director asked for immediate payment, saying otherwise BUS, which operates in some areas of Mount Lebanon and northern Lebanon, would suspend its maintenance work.
"Blackouts will become more frequent," Ms Obeid said.