Hopes fade for Morocco quake victims

By Pascale Harter
BBC correspondent in Al Hoceima

Al Hoceima itself is mostly still standing, more than a day after a powerful earthquake struck this north-eastern Moroccan city.

Local residents are terrified to stay inside, fearing aftershocks

The buildings, many of which are three- or four-story-high, are fairly sturdy.

However on the outskirts, you suddenly find buildings that have collapsed as if they were made of cardboard.

There are possessions lying around, looking pathetic.

One shoe, a roll of baking foil and a tooth brush on the ground outside an apartment block - the personal effects of one entire family that had been wiped out.

We have perfectly adequate building controls here in Morocco and the buildings are strong Morocco's minister of interior

In another case, the Red Crescent pulled a couple from the rubble, who were alive but seriously injured. Their two-year-old baby was presumed dead, lost in the wreckage.

Although French disaster experts have arrived with their sniffer dog looking for survivors, the authorities say they are not expecting to find more.

'Written off'

The Red Crescent told me that it had been almost 24 hours since they had pulled anyone alive from the rubble.

In pictures: Morocco quake Desperate rescue efforts Survivors speak of panic

They seem to be pulling out only corpses. They seem to have written off people in the outlying villages, such as Ait Kamra.

The backbone of the rescue effort has been made up of local volunteers and the civil guard who use their bare hands and small pickaxes, trying to dig people out from the rubble.

They do not have the specialist knowledge.

They do not know how to feed an oxygen tube into an air pocket where someone might be trapped and barely holding on to life and they did not have bulldozers and other such equipment, until very late in the day.

This is the first time in 40 years that Morocco has been hit by an earthquake.

This area has previously only felt small tremors.

I asked the interior minister if more could have been done to prepare for such a disaster.

"No, no, we have perfectly adequate building controls here in Morocco and the buildings are strong," Mostafa Sahel told me.

An inhabitant of one of the outlying villages told me that it was the poor people who had been left to die - those who could not afford to build their houses out of anything more solid than mud bricks.

'Wretched resignation'

Aid has been arriving.

Access to the worst hit areas is difficult

The United States has pledged $50,000 to the local Red Crescent to help provide tents, food, water and sanitation.

Relief workers are now focusing on caring for those left homeless, rather than finding more survivors.

The mood here is one of wretched resignation. The people are in shock.

They are terrified to stay inside buildings, sleeping out in their cars, or together in tents or under plastic sheeting, as they do not want to be inside when another tremor occurs.

Aftershock

At about 0530 on Wednesday there was an aftershock of magnitude five.

It caused the collapse of three buildings, killing three people.

It is too early to say if disease will become a problem. At the moment the authorities are more concerned with giving people food and shelter.

The local hospital was overwhelmed at first, but certainly the survivors have been getting adequate treatment.

People with very serious injuries were airlifted out to Rabat, the capital, for treatment.

The local hospital is not inundated now, because it seems that either people were treated for minor injuries, or else they were dead.