A car drives around a pool of water on a road in Beirut's southern suburbs. (Credit: Wael Taleb/L'Orient Today)
The Civil Defense evacuated passengers from a car stuck on a flooded road following heavy rainfall in the Rahab district, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, on Wednesday morning, it announced via X (formerly Twitter).
The latest bout of localized early morning rainfall severely disrupted traffic on several main roads in Beirut and surrounding areas on Wednesday, with L'Orient-Le Jour's reporters witnessing traffic almost at a standstill on the road linking Mansourieh to the Mkalles roundabout, in the eastern part of Beirut, and in the Laylakeh area in Beirut's southern suburbs.
On X, the Road Traffic Department reported that traffic was also congested at Khaldeh, at the southern entrance to Beirut, on the airport side, as well as at Sin al-Fil in the south-east of the capital and at Dbayyeh on the coastal highway towards Jounieh (Kesrouan). The department urged motorists to take care on the road and "drive slowly."
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The first heavy rainfall of the season last weekend had already caused major flooding on Sunday evening on roads in the Jourieh area, where the drainage system was blocked by large quantities of garbage.
In a message on X, caretaker Public Works Minister Ali Hamieh, shared photographs and videos showing clogged drains, before calling out the municipal employees responsible for cleaning these drains. Highway maintenance is the responsibility of the Public Works Ministry, while inland road maintenance is the responsibility of municipalities.
Intense rains, coupled with sewage and drainage systems blocked by garbage, cause flooding every year, which extends to some of Lebanon's low-lying coastal areas. Weakened by nearly four years of socio-economic crisis, the country is ill-prepared for winter storms. An elderly man was killed when the vehicle he was traveling was swept away in heavy flooding in October 2022.