Flooded roads due to bad weather: Salam asks transport minister to investigate

The brief but powerful rainfall in Beirut and its surroundings on Wednesday afternoon flooded some roads, causing massive traffic jams, according to witnesses contacted by L'Orient Today.

The state-run National News Agency (NNA) reported that the entrances to Beirut and its suburbs experienced heavy congestion.

A section of the Myrna Shalouhi highway between the suburbs of Sin al-Fil and Boushrieh was completely flooded, according to videos on social media, likely due to the obstruction of the stormwater drainage network. However, the level of rain on Wednesday afternoon was not as spectacular as the state of this roadway might suggest.

In response to this situation, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam called on the Minister of Public Works and Transport, Fayez Rassamny, and asked for an immediate investigation to determine responsibilities. He also asked him to take the necessary measures against anyone responsible for acts of negligence.

On the road, some motorists took more than an hour, even two hours, to cover distances they usually travel in less than half an hour, even when traffic is dense. Traffic was particularly congested at Dekkwaneh, Sin al-Fil, Achrafieh, and Adlieh.

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Daily ordeal

On X, the protest MP Waddah Sadek attributed this chaos to the "suspect negligence of some security forces agents." He also criticized the fact that some businesses built on the edges of heavily trafficked roads allowed their customers to park in "two or three rows" with valets blocking traffic for them to maneuver, or "cement blocks" placed by valets. He found the situation particularly dramatic in municipalities located at the various entrances to Beirut, which has "turned life inside the capital into a daily ordeal without any real action from officials, despite [his] repeated requests."

Sadek added, "Citizens are stuck in traffic for hours, while shops and restaurants have three rows of cars in front of them, with the protection of a cyclist or cement blocks placed for the benefit of valets, in the total absence of traffic police. The worst example is the street of the Municipality and Governorate at the entrance of the capital, which has turned life inside Beirut into a daily ordeal of waiting, without any real action from officials despite my repeated requests."

Lebanese infrastructure is aging, saturated, and often poorly maintained for years, and each episode of rain causes significant traffic jams. The entrances to Beirut are generally congested every morning and evening, even under normal circumstances. Part of the country's infrastructure, in the southern suburb of Beirut, in the Bekaa, and in south Lebanon, was destroyed by Israeli bombings during the more than 15 months of war between Israel and Hezbollah, with a bill running into billions of dollars.