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Qatar World Cup confronted by yet another problem – rain
DOHA, Oct 26, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Of all the problems faced by Qatar’s World
Cup, rainfall was probably the very last issue tournament organisers in the
desert state expected to deal with.
But severe flooding caused by a year’s worth of rain has again raised
questions over the ability of Qatar’s infrastructure — much of it being put
in place for 2022 — to cope with such conditions.
Extreme weather conditions on October 20 made roads impassable, flooded
tunnels, universities, schools, clinics, embassies, the new national library
and closed shops, some for several days, as 84 millimetres of rain fell.
Average rainfall for Qatar is 77mm. For the month of October, the average
is just 1.1mm.
In Education City, a Doha suburb where a 2022 World Cup stadium will be
located, official figures showed an astonishing 98mm rain fell.
The ministry of municipality and environment’s “rainfall emergency
committee” said 287 million gallons of rainwater were subsequently removed.
Social media showed rainwater running down staircases inside buildings,
parked cars all but submerged and people using jet skis on main roads usually
used by cars.
One widely-shared image showed a central Doha football ground, not a World
Cup venue, resembling a lake.
A contrite public works authority, Ashghal, tweeted its apologies saying it
was “sorry for the effects caused by the recent heavy rainfall”.
The extreme conditions were exacerbated by Qatar’s terrain, causing
drainage problems.
“If you get heavy rain in the desert it often floods quite quickly because
the sand is baked hard in the sun and there’s not much vegetation (to help
with drainage),” Steff Gaulter, senior meteorologist with Al Jazeera told
AFP.
She added more research was needed to see if the weather experienced by
Qatar was down to climate change or weather patterns caused by El Nino.
– Not a one-off –
Undoubtedly the conditions were extreme for Qatar.
However, the worry for tournament organisers is that neither the weather
nor the impact on infrastructure, in a country spending $500 million a week
to prepare for 2022, were unprecedented.
In November 2015, Qatar’s prime minister launched an investigation after
heavy rains exposed poor construction during similar amounts of rainfall,
some of it falling inside Doha’s Hamad International Airport.
Exactly a year later, Qatar was hit again.
This year’s floods were the third in four years, close to or at the time
when it will host the World Cup in 2022.
Governing body FIFA moved the tournament from its traditional June/July
date to take place between November 21 and December 18, 2022.
This was, ironically, because of concerns over the extreme Qatari heat,
which regularly top 40-plus degrees Celsius (100-plus Fahrenheit) during its
summer.
Any matches taking place in 2022 confronted by similar conditions to last
weekend, could be delayed or postponed because of transport access to the
grounds, despite a still-being-built Metro system.
The only World Cup venue so far completed, Khalifa International Stadium,
was not badly impacted by the floods, workers there told AFP.
A spokesman for Qatar’s World Cup organising body, the Supreme Committee
for Delivery & Legacy, said “the proposed venues for the 2022 FIFA World Cup
Qatar were largely unaffected with minimal disruption”.
But he added the rain has helped organisers “identify areas for necessary
improvements”.
The chances are that Qatar’s World Cup will emerge unscathed when it comes
to rain in 2022.
The conditions were extreme, but they were extreme for Qatar, where the
average rainfall during November and December is still only 15mm.
But having dealt with concerns over corruption, human rights, diplomatic,
heat and an expanded World Cup, Qatar 2022 now finds itself worrying about
rain.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0836 HRS