Climate Erodes Buildings in Persian Gulf

The climate in the Persian Gulf, one of the harshest in the world, is eating away the buildings at the heart of its cities.

Crumbling concrete is not good news for the region’s oil-exporting nations, which are already in deficit due to falling oil prices in the 1980s.

Just when most gulf Arab states thought their basic economic infrastructures were complete, they face the seemingly never-ending expense of multibillion-dollar maintenance and reconstruction programs.

“Operations and maintenance are going to be a big budget burden of the 1990s,” said a gulf-based senior bank economist.

The problem arises from a chemical reaction between the hot, humid climate and the ingredients used to make concrete, construction industry experts say.

Governments are worried.

“I wonder whether the lessons from our experiences over the past 15 years are not always being given the consideration they deserve,” Bahrain’s Minister of Works, Power, and Water, Majid al-Jishi, told a conference in Manama.

Unless the lessons are learned, he said, government and private money would continue to be wasted.

The president of Bahrain’s Society of Engineers, Hisham al-Shehaby, told the conference that quick solutions to the problems of deteriorating concrete did not look promising.

British expert Adam Neville said reinforced concrete corrodes in the gulf three to four times faster than in Britain.

Summer temperatures of 100 to 120 degrees coupled with humidity often well over 90% activate the chlorides in sand-based concrete, he explained. These corrosive salts oxidize a building’s reinforcing steel rod skeletons and the whole edifice begins to crack and crumble.

The problem is compounded because knowledge of these long-term corrosive effects was not sufficiently known when many buildings were built during a boom generated by high oil prices in the 1970s.

For example, a lot of sand for concrete was taken from the gulf, and the sea salts--full of corrosive chlorides, were not properly washed out--the experts said.

“Since then, better aggregates, purer water have been used, and there is better supervision. Concrete is water-proofed better,” said one construction industry manager.

But nothing can stop the climate completely.

“The climate is very, very aggressive. You are still going to get problems in 20 years. You will never get the 50 years you can expect in Europe,” said one expert with a local construction company.

Some older structures have proved too costly to repair. For example, two wings of Bahrain’s Gulf Hotel, built in 1969, have been demolished. A hotel spokesman said they were deteriorating too rapidly because of high salt content.

Without further technological advances, gulf Arab states face the costs, including depreciation and insurance, of renewing infrastructures near the coast about every 20 years, economists said.

Inland, the weather is kinder to man-made structures but the desert sands, which buried a dozen ancient civilizations, have no more respect for 20th-Century construction.

Sand plus wind acts as a natural abrasive on buildings while the desert dunes, creeping inexorably forward at a rate of a few feet a year, must be constantly held back. Sand is not as damaging as atmospheric corrosion, but it adds to costs.