catastrophe
Earthquake in Morocco – Desperate search for survivors
A man digs a grave to bury the body of an earthquake victim in the village of Ouargane, near Marrakesh. photo
© Mosa’ab Elshamy/AP
Hundreds of people are still missing after the severe earthquake in Morocco that killed several thousand people. Search teams traveled from some countries to provide support. German helpers, however, canceled their preparations.
It was the worst earthquake in decades Morocco: More than 2,000 people have died in the northwest African country and hundreds are still missing. Rescue and recovery forces in the disaster areas continued the search for survivors on Sunday, but the helpers only made progress with difficulty in the sometimes remote mountain regions.
In addition, there was still a risk of aftershocks, which could cause damaged buildings to collapse completely. The 6.8 magnitude earthquake shook Morocco on Saturday night. Panic broke out among the population.
The full extent of the disaster could not yet be predicted on Sunday, and emergency services had difficulty reaching remote regions. According to official information, 2012 deaths were counted by Sunday afternoon. At least 2,059 other people were injured, more than half of them seriously, local media reported, citing the Interior Ministry. It was feared that the number of victims would continue to rise. King Mohammed VI ordered three days of national mourning.
Epicenter in the Atlas Mountains
When searching for people buried as a result of an earthquake, experts speak of a time window of around 72 hours. This applies as a guide value, which is the longest a person can get by without water. The quake occurred on Friday evening at 11:11 p.m. local time. It was felt within a radius of 400 kilometers, said Nasser Jabour, head of a department at the National Institute of Geophysics, to the Moroccan news agency MAP. It lasted for several seconds. According to the US Earthquake Observatory USGS, the quake occurred at a depth of 18.5 kilometers.
The epicenter was a good 70 kilometers southwest of Marrakesh in the Atlas Mountains. There are towns along steep and winding serpentines. Since earthquakes occur relatively rarely in North Africa, experts believe that buildings are not built robustly enough to withstand such strong shaking.
People in the region told dpa reporters on Sunday that in the village of Moulay Brahim alone, 50 kilometers south of Marrakech, half of the 84 residents had died. A small mountain village in Chichaoua province was almost completely destroyed, state broadcaster TV 2M reported. Drones were used to help emergency services search for bodies.
WHO: 300,000 people affected by the quake
A survivor in the town of Imintanoout told the Hespress news site: “My wife, my children and I tried to leave the house, but my little daughter and my father, who is 102 years old, stayed. I tried to go back, to get them out, but in vain, my father and daughter died there.” In areas from the Atlas Mountains to the old town of Marrakesh, buildings and famous cultural monuments were sometimes severely damaged. Some cracks can be seen on the city wall of Marrakesh and the gates.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 300,000 people in Marrakech and surrounding areas have been affected by the accident. Most people in the quake-affected areas preferred to spend Sunday night outdoors. Since then, several aftershocks have shaken the country. There was a stronger quake on Sunday morning around 9:00 a.m. local time; according to the US Earthquake Observatory USGS, it had a magnitude of 3.9. According to Hespress, the epicenter of the aftershock was about 80 kilometers southwest of Marrakesh, similar to the first quake.
Messages of condolence came from all over the world. The heads of state and government of the European Union also offered their help and expressed their condolences in a letter to the king. The Foreign Office said on Sunday afternoon that there was no knowledge of whether Germans were among the victims. The German embassy in Rabat set up an emergency number for affected Germans.
Location on the African Plate
A special Spanish military unit with search dogs flew to Morocco on Sunday. Members of the Fire Department without Borders from Spain and other professional fire departments were also on the move. The Gulf emirate of Qatar sent a rescue and search team, reported the Qatari news agency QNA. A relief team also set off from Tunisia on Saturday evening.
Relief workers were also available in Germany and other countries, but some of them were no longer expected to be deployed on Sunday afternoon. “There has been no request for help from Morocco so far,” said a spokesman for the two organizations, the aid organization ISAR Germany and the Federal Association of Rescue Dogs, to the dpa. “We’re now driving everything back, clearing out our camp and unpacking our backpacks.” The Federal Agency for Technical Relief (THW) also sent its helpers, who had already been assembled near Cologne/Bonn airport for a possible rescue operation in Morocco, back home for the time being. The team remains operational, it was said.
The northwest African country has around 37 million inhabitants and is around 446,000 square kilometers in size. It lies on the so-called African plate, one of the largest continental plates in the world. According to the Potsdam Georesearch Center (GFZ), during the earthquake, floes on the African plate and the Eurasian plate, which lies north of it, moved jerkily against each other.