Dubai: A family outing in Dubai turned out to be a nightmare for an expatriate Indian family who lost their way and got stuck in the desert sand along with their vehicle for six hours at night before the police came and rescued them.
The family hails from Kerala, and he has now no words to thank Dubai Police.
According to Abdul Rahim, “It was pitch dark, and there was not a single vehicle anywhere in the desert.”
Narrating the experience, the IT engineer, who has been in Dubai for ten years now, said his family, including his wife Jamshiya and children Rimsha Fathima, six, and Mohammed Rashdan, three, had left their home in Al Ghusais after 3 pm.
“I have a saloon car. We did not have any plan or intention to go to the desert; we just thought of going for a long drive and spending that lovely evening with my family at lakes in Al Qudra. We thought of seeing Love Lake or Al Qudra Lake.
Abdul Rahim did not use his GPS, which is the primary reason that he lost his way. “Since the roads towards the lakes are not asphalted, I thought I would somehow reach there and kept driving. We were wondering why we did not see any other vehicle. But it was only after we ended up hitting the sands that I realised we had been driving in the opposite direction. I couldn’t get the car out of the sand because it sank as I accelerated.”
Location
It was 7 pm in the evening, and his all trials to find the location using Google Maps failed. “It showed the Lehbab Road, which is somewhere in Jebel Ali. Maybe that was the main road after the desert, he said.
Since Abdul Rahim could not confirm the location, the car recovery service from his insurance company also could not help them, he said.
“Then I remembered reading reports about the police rescuing people and called 999. Due to a network issue, I couldn’t talk to the car recovery company properly. However, fortunately, the call to 999 went through, and it was clear,” he said.
In his attempt to send the location to Dubai Police, Abdul Rahim said the Operations Room informed all the stations around that area.
My kids were terrified, but the police gave us a guarantee that they would come and rescue us, even though they kept calling us until they reached us.
An official with Dubai police confirmed receiving an emergency call about a family losing their way in the desert. Police rescue teams and police officers from the Al Faqa’a Police Station identified the location in the Al Lisaili desert in Dubai and rushed to rescue the family.