Saudis detain 40 in connection with flooding

Arab News:

More than 40 people including government officials, contractors and engineers have been detained for questioning in connection with the Nov. 25 Jeddah floods.

The high-level committee in charge of investigating the deluge summoned seven senior officials and employees at the Jeddah municipality for questioning on Sunday.

The officials included assistants to the mayor and those in charge of some service departments. They were called to submit their views on the deluge and the reasons why it occurred. Arab News obtained the names of the seven being questioned, but reserved the right to name them.

...

This seems like a strange reaction to an act of God. If they are concerned about the flooding they could find numerous flood control engineers in Houston who could prepare a drainage design and suggest contractors to implement it. That is how Houston handled its flooding problems without detaining any public officials.

My speculation is that normal drainage channels were inadequate to handle the heavy rains. That is not too surprising with a desert environment and relatively flat ground. What is needed is drainage channels that can handle the increased volume and holding ponds to take the increased water. Who knows, in a place like Saudi Arabia they can probably find a use for the excess water.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more