More than 72 hours after the earthquake which left nearly 2,900 dead, the race against time continues in Morocco. Volunteers and rescuers remain mobilized this Tuesday to try to find possible survivors.
The epicenter of the earthquake which left 2,862 dead and 2,562 injured, according to a final report Monday evening, is located in a mountainous area of the High Atlas, where landslides have further made access to the affected villages difficult.
Some residents say they are “abandoned”
Moroccan rescuers, supported by foreign teams, are trying to speed up searches to find possible survivors and provide shelter to hundreds of families who have lost their homes. But in certain isolated areas, residents say they are abandoned to their fate.
In the village of Imoulas, perched in the High Atlas, the inhabitants seem lost amid the rubble. “We feel completely abandoned here, no one has come to help us. Our houses have collapsed and we have nowhere to go. Where are all these poor people going to live? », Deplores Khadija, a resident of this difficult-to-access village. To deliver food to earthquake survivors in certain small landlocked towns, helicopters travel back and forth.
The head of the Moroccan government, Aziz Akhannouch, chaired a meeting on Monday devoted in particular to the reconstruction of destroyed housing in the disaster areas. “Citizens who have lost their housing will receive compensation (…) a clear offer will be announced soon,” he declared. According to him, solutions are currently being studied for homeless people.
Field hospitals in isolated areas
In the meantime, the villages closest to the epicenter of the earthquake still remain inaccessible due to landslides. The Moroccan army has set up field hospitals to treat the wounded in landlocked areas, such as in the village of Asni, in the disaster-stricken province of Al Haouz, just over an hour from Marrakech. More than 300 patients have already been admitted there, said doctor Colonel Youssef Qamouss. “We assess the severity, so serious patients we send them to Marrakech. We also have a radiology unit, a laboratory and a pharmacy,” he explained.
On Sunday evening, Morocco announced that it had accepted offers from four countries to send search and rescue teams: Spain, the United Kingdom, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. “It’s difficult to say if the chances of finding survivors are diminishing because for example in Turkey (hit by a very violent earthquake in February), we managed to find a woman alive after six and a half days. There is always hope,” said Spanish team leader Annika Coll. “It is also important to find the dead bodies because the families must know and mourn.”