As odds of discovering survivors of the earthquake that wrecked numerous Moroccan mountain villages and left about 3,000 people dead and thousands more homeless dwindled, rescue crews stepped up their mammoth endeavor on Wednesday.
Vehicles loaded with supplies were slowly making their way up difficult mountain roads to provide much-needed food and tents to survivors of the nation’s deadliest and strongest earthquake on record.
Smaller tremors are still shaking the catastrophe area, and one of them caused stones to fall in the village of Imi N’Tala. A person was hurt there as a result of the shock, as witnessed by AFP journalists.
Teams of searchers were still searching the debris for survivors. The 72-hour window during which rescues are thought to be most possible has long since passed in Morocco, but survivors are still in some cases found well beyond that period.
“We’re working in a lot of places,” said Fahas Abdullah Al Dosanri of the Qatari fire department, part of the international aid effort, adding some villages still cannot be reached by road.
According to Moroccan authorities, workers are clearing dirt tracks that have been blocked off by landslides.
Many towns in the High Atlas highlands in the hardest-hit districts south of Marrakesh were completely destroyed, and inhabitants were seeking refuge in yellow government-issued tents.
“We just have the food donations, and we have some blankets, but no housing,” said 18-yead-old survivor Afrah Fouzia in the tiny mountain village of Tikht, which was so heavily damaged that it is now only rubble.
“Soon the rainy season will start, it will get colder and we’ll be completely destitute,” she told AFP. “There are a lot of children here.”
The tents in Tikht and other places show that aid is getting to some isolated areas, but they are only meant to be temporary solutions that will be completely insufficient if the weather changes.
Spain, Britain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates have all sent rescue teams to Morocco, but the country has so far turned down offers from the United States, France, and certain Middle Eastern states.
On Wednesday, the United States announced that it had sent a small team to Morocco to help examine the situation and offered $1 million in assistance to local organizations.
“We are in discussions with them about what we can best provide to support their efforts,” said State Department spokesman Mathew Miller.
Since an earthquake on the Atlantic coast in 1960 that wrecked Agadir and killed between 12,000 and 15,000 people, this earthquake was the deadliest to hit Morocco.
According to estimates from the UN, the most recent earthquake has affected more than 300,000 people, with children making up one-third of those affected.
For the country of North Africa, which was already experiencing economic difficulties and years of drought and now expects a decline in the vital tourism sector, the recovery effort is expected to be immense.
Many homes in rural areas have been rendered unusable as a result of the disaster, and the inhabitants lack the resources to swiftly, or possibly ever, restore them on their own.
“We lost everything,” said Mohammed Al Moutawak, a 56-year-old farmer in the village of Ineghede.
