A powerful earthquake struck Morocco on Friday evening, killing more than 2,000 people and setting off frantic rescue efforts through the city’s rubble-strewn streets and remote rural areas, as some residents toiled through mountains of rubble with their bare hands.
The earthquake, which had a magnitude of at least 6.8 and occurred about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from the southern city of Marrakesh, was the strongest to hit the area in a century, according to the US Geological Survey. It rippled through the center of the country, shaking not only Marrakech but also Agadir, a seaside resort on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, and Ouarzazate, a major city in the southeast.
Much of the affected area is rural, with many houses made of mud bricks, a traditional construction method that is highly vulnerable to earthquakes and heavy rains.
Scenes of destruction unfolded across the country. In Marrakesh, southern Morocco’s main city, residents poured from their homes into the city’s cobbled streets to find piles of rubble from buildings that had crumbled around them, including mounds of red dust from the walled old city, or medina.
In the hardest-hit rural areas, Moroccans climbed through canyons between collapsed houses that spilled over roads and towns, trying to retrieve their dead.
About 50 kilometers southwest of Marrakech, in the city of Amizmiz near the epicenter, Yasmina Bennani was about to go to sleep on Friday evening when she heard a loud noise. The shaking cracked the walls, broke vases and lamps, and caused chunks of the ceiling to fall to the floor, clogging her sink and stove with dust and dirt.
“I felt terrorized,” said Ms. Bennani, 38, a journalist who, like many in the area, lives in a mudbrick house. “It didn’t last long, but it felt like years.”
According to the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior, the earthquake killed at least 2,059 people and injured more than 2,000.
The precise magnitude of the earthquake was not yet clear. The US Geological Survey estimated its magnitude at 6.8, but the Moroccan Geological Institute estimated it at 7.2. That would make it more than twice as big, according to the logarithmic scale on which earthquakes are measured. The US agency said local estimates can often be more accurate, but initial magnitude measurements are measured automatically and must be reviewed by seismologists.
The contours of the damage were still taking shape on Saturday. But it was clear that the scale of the catastrophe was great, with rural provinces outside Marrakech bearing the brunt. According to early breakdowns of casualties by province, the death toll was especially high in the rural Haouz region southeast of Marrakech, which includes parts of the High Atlas Mountains.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement that more than 300,000 civilians in Marrakech and its suburbs had been affected by the earthquake. “Many families are trapped under the rubble of their homes, and damage has also been reported to parts of Marrakech’s medina, a UNESCO World Heritage Site,” the statement said.
Moroccan architects say the area near the epicenter is home to many earthen houses that were not built to withstand an earthquake of this magnitude. Omar Farkhani, the former president of the Moroccan National Order of Architects, said residents in such areas are often too poor to pay architects and end up building their homes themselves or with the help of low-skilled workers.
Despite government efforts to impose better earthquake-resistant building standards in recent years, the architects say, many builders still ignore regulations to reduce construction costs.
“Given the state of the country’s buildings, this death toll was more or less expected,” said Anass Amazirh, an architect in the northern city of Casablanca, where residents felt the earth shaking but there were no immediate reports of casualties or destruction.
Early rescue efforts in some of these hard-hit rural areas proved challenging, partly because many of the villages were built in the red, steep mountains around Marrakech, but also because the few roads that wound through the countryside were blocked by fallen people . rubble, according to 2M, Morocco’s state media. Telephone services and electricity were also out in some of the most affected areas.
More than twelve hours after the earthquake, Morocco’s leader, King Mohammed VI, said nothing about the disaster. When he did speak, he did not address the public but issued a brief statement noting that he had ordered the country’s armed forces to contribute to the rescue efforts. The Moroccan army said The air force evacuated victims from the hard-hit Haouz province to a military hospital in Marrakesh.
It was not immediately clear where the king was at the time of the earthquake, but he is regularly absent from the country without explanation. His cabinet, which appears to manage day-to-day state affairs, rarely informs Moroccan citizens of his whereabouts unless announcing his presence at an official event.
Yet there has been little or no public indication in Morocco of the kind of political instability that has recently rocked other parts of Africa and the Middle East. The most pressing problem for most Moroccans is the economy.
Like many of its neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa, Morocco has suffered several blows in recent years, starting with the coronavirus pandemic, which put the country’s vital tourism sector on hold. A prolonged drought has undermined agricultural livelihoods, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent the price of imported wheat and other key commodities soaring.
Before the pandemic, the tourism sector alone accounted for more than 7 percent of gross domestic product and 565,000 jobs in a country of about 37 million people, much of it concentrated in Marrakech and the surrounding region, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. .
Countries from Algeria to Israel and Taiwan quickly offered help.
France, a former colonial power in Morocco, was one of the first to do this. The French Embassy in Morocco opened a crisis hotline and the mayor of the southern French port city of Marseille said that he would send firefighters to assist in rescue efforts in Marrakesh, a twin city.
President Biden said in a statement Saturday morning that his administration was in contact with Moroccan officials and offered assistance.
“We are working expeditiously to ensure that American citizens in Morocco are safe and stand ready to provide any necessary assistance to the Moroccan people,” Mr. Biden said.
Officials in Turkey, which was hit by a massive and deadly earthquake in February, said the country was ready to send 265 aid workers and 1,000 tents. But first Morocco would have to formally request help, a step required before foreign crews can be deployed.
Images from Marrakech’s historic city center, a UNESCO World Heritage site dating to the 11th century, showed widespread damage. Gray remains of collapsed buildings littered street corners and some cars sagged under piles of fallen concrete.
Raja Bouri, 33, who lives on the outskirts of Marrakech, said the walls of her house had withstood the earthquake, but everything in her kitchen had fallen to the floor.
“I have never felt anything like this in my life,” Ms. Bouri said. “It felt like a plane was falling on me.”
In Agadir, a popular tourist resort about 160 miles southwest of Marrakesh, Jihane Maftoeh, 36, described the fear she felt when she felt the first tremors.
“We prayed and heard things breaking. I got dressed, left the house and didn’t even look back,” she said.
Heartbreaking scenes also took place elsewhere. A woman who did not give her name told Moroccan state television that her husband and four children had died in the earthquake.
“Mustapha, Hassan, Ilhem, Ghizlaine, Ilyes,” she said, her voice choked with emotion. “Everything I had is gone. I’m all alone.”
In the small, mud-brick village of Mezguida in southeastern Morocco, home to about 1,000 people, residents said almost the entire village had slept outside on Friday evening, fearing aftershocks. In rural Morocco, it is not uncommon for families to sleep outside on their roofs during the hot summer months to keep cool. Many in the village planned to sleep outside for a second night on Saturday.
Severe earthquakes in Morocco, which the US Geological Survey calls “unusual but not unexpected,” have previously caused deaths and significant economic damage.
Morocco is at the crossroads of a slow-motion tectonic crash between the African and Eurasian plates. Over millions of years, the movements have crumpled the landscape, raising the Atlas Mountains and creating a complex network of fault lines across the region.
The number of collisions near Morocco is quite low: the plates collide at only 4 to 6 millimeters per year, meaning earthquakes are infrequent. By comparison, the land around the San Andreas Fault shifts about 50 millimeters every year. But over many years, the slow movement near Africa’s northern coast can build up enough tension to cause violent earthquakes, including yesterday’s deadly quake.
The worst in Morocco’s recent history was a magnitude 5.8 earthquake that killed at least 12,000 people in March 1960.
Agadir collapsed under the force of the earthquake. About a third of the population died. Restaurants, shops and the central market were razed to the ground and thousands of people were buried under concrete.
Vivian Yee, Mike Ives And Maya Wei Haas and contributed to the reporting.