Semalam we just spend our weekend pusing2 kat sini jek. It's the time to enjoy the 'beauty' of Jubail, heh.. Well, actually sebab the night before we received an SMS from Civil Defense according the news below. Since I'am still in early pregnancy, so better avoid lah demi kesihatan diri sendiri serta baby yg disayangi walaupun dalam hati meronta-ronta nak gi round kedai abaya .
Ok baca je lah berita ni. I tak berapa larat nak menulis hari ni.Sekian.
Dammam gas leak raises safety concerns
DAMMAM: Worried and alarmed citizens and expatriates have suggested Dammam’s First Industrial City be located in an area far removed from densely populated centers, a day after a gas leak from one of its plants threatened local residents.
A number of people were hospitalized after toxic gases leaked from the Middle East Engineering Co. Ltd. facility on Wednesday. The air had cleared on Thursday and it was business as usual. But Thursday being a weekend, people stayed at home as advised by the Civil Defense authorities through a number of text messages.
Some of those who suffered enormously because of the gas leak spoke of their ordeal. They, however, did not realize it was a toxic gas leak. Some thought it was an electrical failure, while others felt their neighborhood boys were burning some toxic materials.
Mohammad Rahat Sultan is a projects coordinator at Abdullah A. Al-Khodari Sons Co. whose family resides in one of the many wings of a cluster of high-rises called Al-Askan, close to the First Industrial City and among the first homes to be affected by the toxic air. The problem was worse for those staying in the top floors of the buildings.
The Askan complex in Dammam comprises 32 towers. Each tower has 17 floors and 52 apartments.
Sultan says it was past midnight on Tuesday when he and his family woke up because of breathlessness in their sixth-floor flat. “Our home was full of a deeply offensive smell. My first reaction was that it was an electrical short circuit and that this was the smell of the burning electrical wires. And so we switched off all our electrical gadgets in the rooms. We then waited for the smell to subside.”
Sultan realized that not only did the smell not subside, his wife began to throw up. “She felt heavy in the head and was extremely uncomfortable. Because the air-conditioning had been switched off, she began to perspire profusely. We then opened all the windows in our flat,” Sultan told Arab News. “That worsened the situation.”
Sultan went out to look for the source of the offensive smell. Everything seemed normal to him. He came back and switched on the pedestal fan to blow out the offensive air. “That resulted in some relief. We could at least breathe. It was only in the morning when our son Adeeb called in saying the school was closed following a gas leak that we realized what had happened,” said Sultan.
He said it was good that people did not know that it was a gas leak. “Otherwise, there would have been greater panic and greater commotion. People were calm in the morning and by that time the authorities had sent in enough messages to alert us of what was happening,” he said.
Turki Al-Rehaily, who works at a chemical company in the First Industrial City, was in Riyadh on Tuesday for some personal work. “I returned the same night by flight. It was past midnight when the flight landed at Dammam’s King Fahd International Airport. When I switched on my cell phone I received the messages from Civil Defense alerting us about the leak and to stay indoors. I immediately called up my family in the Al-Safa district. They were panicky. They thought the drainage lines in our area had burst open. I told them what had happened and asked them to leave immediately.”
Al-Rehaily immediately took his family and moved to his parents’ place in the Hail Shatea district. “As we got further and further away from the First Industrial City we felt better and better.”
Sultan and Al-Rehaily among others have suggested that the chemical companies in the First Industrial City be shifted to far-off places. “These companies pose a safety hazard in such densely populated residential areas,” said Al-Rehaily.
