Morocco’s mud brick housing makes search for earthquake survivors harder
- Rescuers in Morocco faced a race against time to find those still alive as death toll passes 2,800
- The strongest quake to hit country in 120 years struck the High Atlas mountains on Friday evening
03:17
Morocco quake deaths climb past 2,000, as survivors rendered homeless
Rescuers digging through the rubble after Morocco’s deadly earthquake warned that the traditional mud brick, stone and rough wood housing ubiquitous in the High Atlas mountains reduced the chances of finding survivors.
“It’s difficult to pull people out alive because most of the walls and ceilings turned to earthen rubble when they fell, burying whoever was inside without leaving air spaces,” a military rescuer, asking not to be named because of army rules against speaking to media, said at an army centre south of the historic city of Marrakech not far from the quake epicentre.
State TV reported late on Monday that the death toll from Morocco’s most powerful earthquake since at least 1900 had risen to 2,862, with 2,562 people injured. Many are still missing.
The traditional homes, sometimes hundreds of years old, sometimes built more recently, have long been a popular sight for tourists travelling to the mountain from Marrakech.
They are often built by the families themselves to a traditional pattern, without any architect’s help and with extensions added when they can.
With no major earthquakes for a long time, few people would have thought to consider the risk of a tremor. But structures crumbled easily in mounds of debris when the quake struck late on Friday.