Four days after the devastating earthquake in the Moroccan region of Marrakech, the actions of King Mohammed VI are awaited and closely scrutinized. Discreet until then, the monarch went on Tuesday, September 12, to the university hospital center (CHU) in Marrakech, to the bedside of the wounded.
He “visited the intensive care unit and the hospitalization unit for earthquake victims” to find out about the state of health of the injured as well as the care provided to them, before donating blood, said the official MAP agency.
At the time of the earthquake, Friday evening, September 8, Mohammed VI was in Paris where he owns a private mansion. A few hours later, on Saturday, he was back in Rabat where he appeared on television in a crisis meeting, without speaking.
Residents left to their own devices
According to a latest official report, the earthquake left 2,901 dead and 5,530 injured. The Red Cross has launched an appeal for around €100 million to support relief operations, after releasing one million Swiss francs (€1.04 million) from its Emergency Fund for support the activities of the Moroccan Red Crescent on the ground.
On site, Moroccan volunteers and rescuers, supported by foreign teams, are trying to speed up searches to find possible survivors and provide shelter to hundreds of families who lost their homes in the earthquake that destroyed entire villages.
But, in certain isolated areas, residents say they are left to their own devices. In the village of Douzrou, located 80 kilometers southwest of Marrakech and blown away by the earthquake, worry can be seen on the faces of survivors, who have improvised makeshift shelters. Around a hundred people died in this town located at the start of the High Atlas mountain ranges, according to residents.
“It’s important that we are taken care of, we can’t survive for long in the wild. The climatic conditions are very harsh. We fear the worst with the winter coming,” worries Ismaïl Oubella, 36, who lost three children (3, 6 and 8 years old), his pregnant wife and his mother.
“We want to be rehoused as quickly as possible, we lost everything, even our livestock. We pulled the dead ourselves out of the rubble, alarms Hossine Benhammou, 61. Nine members of his family including his daughter and two granddaughters died.
“It’s not the government that helps, it’s the people.”
A team of twenty rescuers from the United Kingdom International Search and Rescue Team (UK-ISAR) arrived on site. “The residents have managed the situation, but we are going to deploy dogs” to see if there are people under the rubble, Steve Willitt, the team leader, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
“We are afraid of the rains which risk cutting off the unpaved road leading to our village. We risk dying of hunger,” says Lahcen Ouhmane, 68, a resident.
In the town of Amizmiz, about an hour away, dozens of survivors are crowded around a semi-trailer, waiting for food aid distributed by volunteers. “It’s not the government that helps, it’s the people,” says Abdelilah Tiba, 28, a volunteer.
Nearly 100,000 children affected
According to Unicef, around 100,000 children were affected by this earthquake in Morocco, where they represent almost a third of the population. The UN organization said it had “mobilized humanitarian personnel to support the immediate response on the ground.”
The head of the Moroccan government, Aziz Akhannouch, assured Monday that “citizens who lost their housing will receive compensation.” According to him, solutions are currently being studied for the homeless.
The villages closest to the epicenter of the earthquake still remain inaccessible due to landslides. In some landlocked areas, helicopters go back and forth to transport food, according to AFP journalists.
The Moroccan army has set up field hospitals to treat the wounded in isolated areas, such as in the village of Asni, in the disaster-stricken province of Al Haouz, just over an hour from Marrakech.