RESCUE efforts following the earthquake in Morocco are being hampered by collapsed structures that leave few air pockets to allow victims to survive.
Asif Hussain, CEO of SKT Welfare, told GB News: “Our teams are on the ground have been there since Sunday morning and the structures are quite weak and so our teams are reporting that a lot of these structures, especially within the Atlas Mountains, are in quite remote areas and built from mud bricks.
“What that means is that when the buildings collapse, there’s actually no air pockets. Unfortunately, what we’re seeing in our reports is that there are a lot of casualties and a lot of people .
“There are many villages that still haven’t been reached and there are people that unfortunately we’re probably going to find that are dead.”
In a discussion with Mark Longhurst and Pip Tomson, he continued: “The number of dead is 2,500 but that is unfortunately going to increase much, much further than what it is right now.
“These are very poor, extremely poor communities that are rural, cut off from the rest of mainland Morocco, if you like, within the Atlas Mountains and so getting to those is very difficult.
“Our team from Marrakech travelled six hours just to get to the village where our team is based. Over 600 families are living outside, exposed to the elements.”
He added: “The Moroccan army is involved in this and is managing the whole of this situation and they are the only real organisation that have this heavy lifting equipment.
“What’s needed right now is heavy lifting equipment but because of the remoteness of these areas, it’s very, very difficult to be able to get there for a lot of organisations.
“But it’s happening slowly. My fear is that by the time we get there, we could have saved a lot more people if we were much better equipped.”
