A BOURNEMOUTH woman has described the moments she was caught in intense flooding while on holiday in Dubai.

Karina Gegg is staying in the United Arab Emirates with her partner Sam and described the scenes in the city as ‘like something you see in a zombie movie’.

“It was carnage, it was madness,” Karina said. “It was like something you see in a zombie movie where the whole place is stood still, it was like an apocalypse.

“Cars were abandoned, people were walking through water, it was back-to-back, chocker on the motorway. You couldn't get a taxi or an Uber for love nor money.

“All the trams were cancelled, the monorails, the trains, everything.”

Bournemouth Echo:

Karina first heard the rain when she woke up on Tuesday, April 16, but said that it stopped and the pair headed out to the Mall of the Emirates.

“When we were in the mall, the whole ceilings were collapsing, shops were shutting,” she said.

“There were just floods and floods of water where all the security guys were trying to push it outdoors.

“Water was falling onto televisions and designer handbags and all these luxury shops.

“It was mental.”

They got to the shopping centre on the train, but when they tried to head back to their hotel, they were left stranded, 10km away.

They decided to walk as far as they could, walking alongside the Sheikh Zayed Road, a highway in the country, saying it was ‘like an apocalypse’.

They found another British family and began to walk with them and managed to find a taxi with a driver who had been stranded too, as the tunnels between the palm and the mainland had been cancelled.

“All the water was flooding in through the doors and into the car,” Karina said. “At one point, we were only about 500 meters from our hotel and that was the worst flood I'd seen all day, where every car around a roundabout were all abandoned.

“I thought to myself, to the taxi driver, you're surely not going to try and get through this.

“We actually got through it, but at one point, I felt like the car was floating. There were just floods and floods of water piling in the doors, and it was just really, really bad.”

Bournemouth Echo: Cars queueing in flood water in Dubai.

Karina and Sam are due to fly back to the UK on Friday and are hopeful that they won’t face too much disruption.

More than 142mm of rain soaked Dubai across a 24 hour period, with the average annual rainfall at just 94.7mm.

This was the most rainfall the UAE has seen since its data began in 1949.

Flights remain suspended from Dubai International Airport.