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A Race to Rescue Survivors

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Rescuers in Morocco are racing to dig survivors out of rubble after the country’s worst earthquake in a century flattened homes and buildings, killing at least 2,000 people.

The magnitude-6.8 quake struck in the mountains south of Marrakesh, an ancient city that is a popular tourist destination. Buildings crumbled and caked its cobblestone streets with mounds of red dust from the walled old city.

The quake particularly devastated communities in the Atlas Mountains, where the full extent of the damage is still unknown. Debris has blocked some of the region’s roads, making it difficult for rescue crews to reach remote communities. The quake also knocked out power and cell service in some areas. The death toll is expected to rise: Most homes there are made of mud bricks, a traditional construction method that is vulnerable to earthquakes and heavy rains.

In some remote areas, people sifted through debris with their bare hands to search for survivors. Others climbed through the canyons between collapsed homes to retrieve bodies. The U.N. said that more than 300,000 people in Marrakesh and its outskirts had been affected by the earthquake.

Emergency teams from around the world are arriving to help. One of the first countries to offer aid was Turkey, which experienced its own earthquake in February that killed tens of thousands of people there and in neighboring Syria. Spain’s foreign affairs minister said the country would send search and rescue teams to try to “find the greatest number of people alive.” The Moroccan Army said the air force was evacuating casualties from a hard-hit region to a military hospital in Marrakesh.

Still, some foreign crews complained that the government approvals process for rescue efforts had been slow. Some villages have not yet received any aid, according to reports on social media. One man who said he was volunteering as a rescuer in a province southwest of the epicenter begged for more assistance in an Instagram video. “We don’t have any food or water. There are still people underground. Some of them are still alive,” he said, adding, “There are some villages that we couldn’t reach.”

Here are the latest updates:

  • Aftershock: A 3.9-magnitude earthquake, almost certainly an aftershock, struck Morocco this morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Afraid of aftershocks, many people spent the weekend sleeping outside on grassy medians and roundabouts near one road heading into Marrakesh.

  • Housing: The office of Morocco’s leader, King Mohammed VI, said he had ordered the government to rapidly provide shelter and rebuild houses for those in distress, “particularly orphans and the vulnerable.”

  • See maps of where the quake struck and photos of the destruction.

  • The authorities announced three days of national mourning to honor victims. Here’s how you can help.

  • “My husband and four children died,” one woman told Moroccan state television. “Mustapha, Hassan, Ilhem, Ghizlaine, Ilyes. Everything I had is gone. I am all alone.”

  • Moroccan news media reported that no deaths had been recorded in hotels in Marrakesh and that there had not been any major damage to the airport there.

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You’ve written about feeling as if you didn’t fit in as a kid. Do you remember when you first thought, I do fit in?

When I got my first apartment in the city. When I got out of art school [at the Rhode Island School of Design], I thought: “My cartoons, they’re weird. They make me laugh, but this doesn’t look like anything that I see.” Then I decided to start taking my cartoons around, and that was when things started to change. That has a lot to do with why I love New York. It was the first time in my life that I didn’t feel like I was in the wrong place, in the wrong clothes, at the wrong time.

How did moving to the suburbs change that?

I did not feel like I fit in. I remember going to a P.T.A. meeting and thinking, I hate this so much. I can’t stand any of these people. There was a field day — you know field day?

Oh yes.

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Will my own lingering sense that somehow moving to the suburbs represents a personal failing ever go away?

You have to repress it. (Laughs.) Deeply repress it.

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