We woke up this morning with about 5 whatsapps, 3 missed calls and several texts. Which is never a good sign. They were saying things like “where are you?” “have you seen the news?” “Hope you are all ok?”. The first thing i did was check my sky news app and we got the news that there had been a huge earth quake in Morocco, in the atlas mountains and only 48 miles from Marrakesh. Having spent a lot of time around those areas i know exactly how bad it is going to be. Especially hill side villages. They will be in big big trouble.
Without trying to bore you now just to explain a few things the atlas mountains are often referred as the gateway to the Sahara and was built in the late 1930s by the French foreign legion. It was built to link the north west of Morocco and big cities like Rabat, Casablanca, Mohammedia, Kenitra and Marrakech to thedessert south east and cities like Ourzazate, Boulemane Dades and places like Merzouga. The route over the mountains is a famous one called Tiz’n’Tchika which takes you about 2250 about sea level. We passed over those moutains when we went on the trip into the dessert. Marrakech and the old medina and town walls is all a Unesco herritage site so parts of it are hundreds and hundreds of years old so they wont be earth quake proof. They will be hit quite hard as it is not earth quakes that kill people it is getting crushed and hit by falling debris, or landslides.
This leads me on to who i fear for the most, when your driving the pass there are countless small settlements of 1000 or so people that are selling all sorts to the tourist trade. SOme of these settlements are built on big cliff edges and im not sure how sturdy they were in normal times let alone a magnitude 6.8 earthquake. So it is the mountain Berbers that i feel for most.
It is important to remember that Agadir suffered a huge earth quake of a similar magnitude in the early 1960s which pretty much destroyed the whole city which is why it is such a modern place now as it has all been built in the last 60 or so years. A lot of people have asked if it will stop us going to Morocco again, i don’t think so. It doesn’t matter which country you go to, which ever continent you cannot legislate for things like that. That is one of life’s things that. Be it car accidents, earth quakes, zombie apocalypse, pandemics etc. You never know what your destiny is which is why it is so important to take life by the horns and make your own destiny.
