Torrential rain and floods batter the glorious ancient quarter of Yemen’s capital

As he surveyed his partially destroyed house, Alameer could not hide his anguish. “The war, the airstrikes and the siege have caused a lot of destruction here, and now the heavy rains have added insult to injury,” said Alameer, a 27-year-old tax authority employee. “The city cannot hold on much longer.”

In its sixth year of war, Yemen’s fragile cultural heritage was already under threat. The Old City, home to stunning gingerbread-colored houses with white symmetrical patterns, is one of the world’s oldest continually inhabited human settlements, dating back more than 2,500 years. It is also a UNESCO-protected heritage site, added to the United Nations list in 2015 when the escalating civil war threatened to destroy or damage the ancient quarter.

Today, Yemeni authorities say the rain and floods have left 111 homes partially or completely destroyed and hundreds of families either seeking shelter elsewhere or living under the threat that their homes could collapse further over their heads.

The destruction in Sanaa is the result of erratic weather has led to flooding this year in many areas of Yemen, deepening the misery of a nation already in the grips of a civil war, a severe humanitarian crisis and the coronavirus epidemic. At least 170 people across the country have died because of flooding, more than 7,000 have been displaced, and dozens of shelters and public buildings have been destroyed, according to local authorities and aid agencies.

“This is completely unprecedented,” said Franz Rauchenstein, the outgoing head of delegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Yemen. “I have never seen such strong rainfall. It’s just one havoc more, after various epidemics, after the coronavirus.”

In Sanaa, all social and economic classes have been affected. Roughly two weeks ago, when the heavy rains began, the Alameer family’s roof started to leak.

Then part of the kitchen ceiling fell in.

 “Now it is so scary for my mother and sister to even cook in the kitchen,” said Alameer, who also lives with his father and four other sisters.

The flooding is only the latest trauma to strike Yemenis since their civil war widened in 2015. That’s when a US-backed Saudi-led coalition began fighting Iran-aligned Shiite Muslim rebels known as the Houthis in an effort to restore Yemen’s government. Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed, and nearly four-fifths of Yemen’s 30 million people need humanitarian assistance to survive.

“In a time that Yemen is battling the covid-19 pandemic with extremely limited resources, floods are devastating parts of the country and thousands of children continue to go hungry, the focus should be on these issues, not on fighting,” said Xavier Joubert, director of Save the Children Yemen.

Funding cuts by the United States and other countries have resulted in sharp reduction in food aid. If funding doesn’t revive by next month, 9 million people will be cut off from health care, and 250,000 severely malnourished children could die, the United Nations warns.

And the flooding looks unlikely to stop. With the rainy season typically lasting from March to October, the United Nations and aid groups are expecting outbreaks of cholera, malaria and dengue fever.

“Flooding is expected to continue in the upcoming weeks, increasing health risks for the already vulnerable population, affected by previous floods and covid-19 outbreak,” wrote ACAPS, a consortium of western aid agencies working in Yemen, in a briefing last week.

Before Yemen’s 2011 Arab Spring revolution, which ushered in a period of conflict and economic turmoil, many residents of the Old City routinely maintained their homes, said Aqeel Nassar, deputy head of the Historic Cities Preservation Authority.

But as jobs and salaries were lost, many homes fell into disrepair or were abandoned. Roughly 40 houses that had been damaged or weakened by airstrikes since 2017 have been repaired with funding from UNESCO, Nassar said. He added that “if those buildings were not repaired, they would have definitely collapsed during these heavy rains.”

In the Old City, the third-floor ceiling of Alameer’s home caved in last week. Now his family worries that a bedroom will suffer the same fate.

“This home is our family’s heritage and history,” Alameer said. “Seeing it getting destroyed is so devastating.” 

Not far away, down one of the Old City’s narrow alleys, Amin Alhabal was staring at a large hole in the ground where part of his house once stood. Gone was a room where they sold groceries — which helped support his family as well as the families of four of his brothers who all lived together — and a separate storage room.

“The room of our family’s grocery store was over a hundred years old. The other room was built when our house was built, around a thousand years ago,” said Alhabal, a 29-year-old father of two small boys.

“My family have lived here generation after generation,” he continued. “Where will we go? What will we do? Our history is about to be wiped out.”

In another corner of the Old City, Um Ayman Alhamdani, 55, wondered how fate could be so cruel to her family. In 2015, an airstrike killed her husband. Two years ago, another airstrike damaged the walls and roof of her two-story home. Ten days ago, water began to pour through the ceilings after a night of heavy rain.

“It is so heartbreaking. I was born in this home and so were my children. Every part of this home carries many memories,” she said. “Living in the home in such condition is putting our lives in danger. Unfortunately, we have nowhere to go and cannot afford to fix it.”

Other residents of the quarter echoed similar sentiments and said they were getting little rebuilding help from government authorities or aid agencies. Local officials said they were fielding as many as 250 requests and were doing their best to rebuild under the duress of war and a shattered economy.

As Mukhtar Aldiram, a 52-year-old army officer, stared at the wall of his home, damaged when the ancient house next door toppled into their yard last week, he shook his head and said: “The city deserves better.”

Raghavan reported from Cairo.