Marrakech spends the night on the streets: ‘I never dare to sleep at home again’

Follow the latest developments here about the earthquake in Morocco.

The concern is also visible among the Canadian Connacher family. 27-year-old Alanna sits visibly emotional on a bench with her mother Val. They are waiting for their flight home in Victoria. “Where we come from there are more earthquakes, so we are used to it,” says Val. “But something like what we experienced here in Marrakech was intense,” Alanna adds to her mother. “Very intense.”

We heard some kind of rumbling. And then the bed started shaking really hard

Alanna Connacher Canadian tourist in Morocco

“We did a tour on Friday, we went camel riding. It really was a fantastic day. When we were in our riad – close to the king’s palace – around 11 o’clock in the evening, we heard some kind of rumbling. And then the bed started shaking very hard,” says the daughter.

Alanna Connacher: “We grabbed our most important things, such as passports, money and laptops, and then went outside. The staff was also panicking and due to lack of communication we didn’t really know what to do. We ended up spending the whole night outside,” adds mother Val. The family wanted to go home and stopped their tour.

Minaret collapsed

The residents of Marrakech themselves cannot go anywhere else. Khadija Tamim lies with her three sons on the ground in Djemaa el Fna, the famous market square of Marrakech where it is normally teeming with tourists. But this Saturday evening, no freshly squeezed orange juice or having your picture taken with a snake around your neck. There are families everywhere lying on blankets with their most important belongings in bags close to them.

They are all too scared to sleep at home. “My house down here has a lot of cracks in the walls. I can’t sleep there with my children. Not after what happened on Friday. We then ran outside barefoot and without clothes. It was traumatic,” says Tamim as she scrambles to her feet and adjusts her headscarf.

Her son Abdesaddek (15) uses her hip as a pillow while he plays Koran texts on his mobile. “I am very afraid of new shocks. Everyone here says there are new tremors coming, so I listen to Quran recitations to calm down.”

The risk of aftershocks is real, a geologist tells NRC.

Her 10-year-old son Walid wants to show the damage in the medina. He walks quickly across the square towards a side street. He points to the mosque. “Look, completely broken.” The minaret of the mosque at Djemaa el Fna has collapsed. The debris is still on the ground and the fences that should cordon off the area have already been pushed aside. Little is left of the car that was parked in front of the mosque.

There is a collapsed residential complex just a ten-minute walk from the square. “A classmate of mine lived here. His house is gone. He now also sleeps on the square, a few meters away from us.” Electricity cables have also been ripped out of the ground and lie on the ground. Scooters speeding by, dodging them with smooth movements.

Walid points out a number of damaged houses belonging to classmates or neighbors. His house is still standing, but is held together by a pillar. “If it shifts, we will be homeless,” he says with a forced smile. When asked if he is afraid, he answers coolly: “Of course I am afraid. I never dare to sleep at home again, but don’t tell my mother that.”