Videos showing the airport flooded on Tuesday morning quickly went viral: passengers wading through water in the building, water falling on the escalators, sweepers working together to clear the water.
For once, the infrastructure has nothing to do with the flooding which motorists are mainly accustomed to on Lebanese roads.
The fact is that in the space of half an hour, between 1:20 PM and 1:50 PM, “unprecedented” torrential rain and heavy hail fell on the airport’s perimeter, the Directorate General for Civil Aviation (DGCA) explained in a statement, adding that “the volume of rain that fell in half an hour was 53 mm, equivalent to the cumulative sum of 10 days of normal rainfall, including 42 mm in 20 minutes.”
The thickness of the hail that fell “exceeded 20 cm in the area of the passenger terminal overlooking the car park,” the DGCA added, noting that activities at the airport were suspended for half an hour “due to poor visibility and flooding in the departure and arrival halls and the VIP lounge.”
The DGCA said it had immediately contacted the company in charge of maintenance and the consultancy firm in charge of the works, “who assured us that the water pipes were all clear and working normally.”
The volume of water that fell “far exceeded the capacity of the pipes and the power of the pumps.”
It should be noted that this phenomenon of unusually heavy rainfall in a short space of time has become a recurring event in Lebanon. Experts attribute this to changes linked to global warming.
