In broken English, Abid Es Sadeqay paints a heartbreaking picture of home — families torn apart, children who have lost parents or siblings, and picturesque homes built of soil crumbled to the ground.
The head chef of Yaletown’s Moltaqa Moroccan Restaurant has been in Vancouver for just five months, but his hometown is near the epicentre of last week’s deadly earthquake in the High Atlas Mountains.
While his family is safe, Es Sadeqy lost a number of friends from school in the disaster, whose death toll has surpassed 2,800. With a magnitude of 6.8, it’s the biggest quake to hit the North African country in more than 120 years.
“They were poor people there in those villages,” he tells Global News through his co-worker, Soukaina Bucko, who translates.
“Who is going to take care of them? Old people. Children.”
Rescue efforts are ongoing, and while critical supplies such as food and water are making their way to some impacted areas, as of Monday afternoon, Moroccan officials had accepted government made from just four countries — Spain, Qatar, Britain and the United Arab Emirates — in addition to approved non-government organizations.
The United Nations estimates that 300,000 people were affected by the quake. In the remote village of Tafeghaghte, more than half of the 160 inhabitants are thought to have died.
Most of the destruction and deaths were in Al Haouz province, where steep and winding roads became clogged with rubble leaving villagers to fend for themselves.
Es Sadeqy and Bucko encouraged anyone who can to donate to some of the certified online fundraising efforts.
Among the verified Canadian efforts are a Red Cross campaign, a UNICEF campaign, a CARE Canada campaign, and a deployment by GlobalMedic, whose teams are already in the country running a hot meal program and installing water purification systems.
On Sunday, the Moroccan House Association of BC held a rally in solidarity with the earthquake victims outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. Director Nadia Ouazzani said there is no coming to terms with the loss from this catastrophe.
“It’s so hard. It hit an area of Morocco that is all mountainous, so the issue that it is hard to reach those people,” she explained. “We’re still trying to digest it.”
While her own family was not impacted, Ouazzani said they felt the tremors.
Benyounes Saidi told Global News he called his son in Marrakech after the disaster and his son was terrified.
“That was really something. We are not used to that,” he said. “You feel this powerlessness. That’s what my son told me … they’re fine but I’m hearing other sad stories.”
Saidi called for compassion in the aftermath of the quake.
Meanwhile, the search for the dead continues. Nearly all of them have been buried, Moroccan officials have said.
More than 2,500 people have been injured in the disaster.
Morocco’s deadliest quake was a magnitude 5.8 temblor in 1960 that struck near the city of Agadir, killing at least 12,000. It prompted Morocco to change construction rules, but many buildings, especially rural homes, are not built to withstand such shaking.
— with files from The Associated Press