On the night of the 8th September, a terrible earthquake of magnitude 6.8 struck central Morocco. The epicentre of the quake was in the High Atlas Mountains, around 71km south-west of Marrakesh, yet it still heavily affected the city. Thrusting and faulting between the plates carrying European and African continents has been detected as the source of the earthquake.
Since 1900, there hasn’t been anything bigger than a magnitude 6.0 within 500km of the epicentre of this earthquake. This was also the deadliest earthquake since the 1960 6.7 magnitude quake in Agadir, which killed over 12,000. Currently, there is no precise death toll, but deaths are already in their thousands. Communities in rural mountain towns suffered the heaviest losses: around 20 people per small village, and their houses and buildings completely reduced to rubble. Since the earthquake occurred late at night, most people were in their homes, and were woken up by the tremors. Most people ended up spending the rest of the night in the streets, in fear of the predicted aftershock which had been estimated to come two hours after – it did not.
In honor of those who lost their lives, the flags will be at half-mast on all public buildings in the country for the next three days. The UN has stated it is ready to aid Morocco’s rescues efforts, as well countries including Spain, Israel and France. The king of Morocco has ordered armed forces to help the rescue teams, and many Moroccans are donating blood to help the victims.
There are certain charities working alongside rescue efforts to help the Moroccan victims. Here is a list of those you can donate to:
Every bit helps!
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