DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: The United Arab Emirates announced on Wednesday that it would spend $544 million to repair the homes of Emirati families after last week's record rains caused widespread flooding that killed four people, including Filipinos, and brought the oil-rich Gulf state to a standstill.

"We learned great lessons in dealing with severe rains," Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum said after a Cabinet meeting, adding that ministers approved "2 billion dirhams to deal with damage to the homes of citizens."

The announcement comes more than a week after the unprecedented deluge lashed the desert country, turning streets into rivers and hobbling the Dubai International Airport, the world's busiest for international passengers.

"A ministerial committee was assigned to follow up on this file... and disburse compensation in cooperation with the rest of the federal and local authorities," said Sheikh Mohammed, also the ruler of Dubai, one of the worst-hit of the UAE's seven sheikhdoms.

The rainfall — the UAE's heaviest since records began 75 years ago — killed three Filipino workers and one Emirati. UAE authorities have not released an official toll.

Cabinet ministers also formed a second committee to log infrastructure damage and propose solutions, Sheikh Mohammed said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"The situation was unprecedented in its severity, but we are a country that learns from every experience," he said.

Climatologist Friederike Otto, a specialist in assessing the role of global warming on extreme weather events, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that it was "high likely" that the rainfall "was made heavier by human-caused climate change."

The storm first landed in Oman on April 14, where it killed at least 21 people, the official Oman News Agency reported.

It then battered the UAE, dumping up to two years' worth of rain on the federal monarchy with a 90-percent expatriate population before subsiding last Wednesday.

But the glamorous hub of Dubai, touted as a picture-perfect city, later faced severe disruption for days, with water-clogged roads and flooded homes.

Dubai's airport canceled 2,155 flights, diverted 115 and did not return to full capacity until Tuesday.

"We must acknowledge... that there has been an unreasonable and unacceptable deficiency and collapse in services and crisis management," prominent Emirati analyst Abdulkhaleq Abdulla said on X.

"We hope that this will not be repeated in the future," he added, in a rare public rebuke.

Dubai is now mostly back to its normal pace, with public transport fully functioning and all major roads open to traffic.

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