Deadly Morocco Quake Exposes Risks of Traditional Building Methods

"It is difficult to get people out alive because most of the walls and ceilings have turned into rubble when they collapsed, burying everyone inside," explained an anonymous military rescuer. Most of the houses in the High Atlas mountains, built in raw earth, wood or stone by the populations themselves without the help of an architect, have crumbled under the violent shocks.

According to a recent article in National Geographic, local architects often build in raw earth or concrete because they "create structures cooler than concrete, are cheaper and require less energy to produce," thus preserving these centuries-old traditional building techniques.

But despite the climatic and economic advantages, these dwellings are very vulnerable to earthquakes. The strong tremors felt in Al Haouz in the Marrakech region, on the night of Friday, September 8, caused significant damage in the most remote mountain villages. "The level of destruction is [...] absolute," said Antonio Nogales, head of the Spanish NGO United Firefighters Without Borders, from Amizmiz, south of Marrakech, one of the areas most affected by the earthquake.

"Where destructive earthquakes are rare, buildings are simply not built robustly enough to withstand strong ground shaking, leading to many collapses and many casualties," notes Bill McGuire, emeritus professor of geophysical and climate hazards at UCL. "The problem with rubble and raw brick materials for older houses is that the whole material is so fragile," adds Colin Taylor, emeritus professor of earthquake engineering at the University of Bristol.

According to the first damage estimates established by the United Nations Satellite Center (UNOSAT), several towns and villages near the epicenter of the earthquake have been wiped off the map. The September 8 earthquake was the deadliest in Morocco in 120 years, after the magnitude 5 quake that struck the city of Agadir in 1960 and killed more than 13,000 people. More recently, in February 2004, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake had also shaken the north of the kingdom, killing nearly 628 people.