In Morocco, foreign rescue crews find few people to save

When the 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Morocco's Atlas Mountains late Friday night,Dr. Malcolm Russell,far away in the British Midlands, knew the window for rescuing survivors would close quickly.

The medical director for U.K. International Search and Rescue (UKISAR), Russell is a veteran of five search and rescue operations in earthquake zones, and was dispatched with 60 other specialists to Morocco.

Their mission was to pull people out from under crushed buildings. But roughly 48 hours later,as he and team members arrived in the village of Asni, it was hard for them to conceal their disappointment.

"We were pushing people [to tell us] if there were ongoing rescue needs, and whether people were still known to be trapped, and the general response was either that no,people had been rescued or had perished," Russell told CBC News in an interview from outside Marrakech. "Such is the extent of the damage in those areas."

Asniand other nearby villages, such as Moulay Brahim, were built on mountainsides, with streams to provide communities with drinking water,irrigation for crops and a more moderate climate than the scorching desert plain below.

But few,if any, of the mud brick and stone homes were built to withstand a direct hit from a strong earthquake.

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Moroccans who survived a deadly earthquake are now trying to heal physical and psychological wounds while trying to move forward without homes to return to or international assistance.

'We need to keep pushing hard'

Buildings made of concrete and reinforced with steel rebar have better survivability,said Russell.

"A multi-story concrete building when it collapses, it 'pancakes' collapses floor by floor," Russellsaid."But there will be certain areas particularly strengthened [ones], such as concrete stairwells where you end up with void spaces that are survivable."

Instead, the simplesingle-story buildings in the Atlas Mountains crumbled and collapsed,crushing occupants inside. Many victims would have been asleep when the quake struck.

"It's disappointing, but we remain positive," said Russell. "We need to keep pushing hard.Somewhere out there, there may be someone alive in the pocket of a building, and our job is to make every possible effort we can to find them."

This is the second call-out of the year for Russell and his British team. They were in Turkey's Hatay province in February when the region was devastated by alarger 7.8 magnitude earthquake. More than 50,000 people were killed and more than 120,000 injured in one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in the Middle East.

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Time running out in frantic search for Morocco quake survivors

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CBC's Chris Brown, reporting from a devastated village in Morocco, says rescue crews are hoping for signs of life, but the window for saving people from the rubble is narrowing.

Still,he says his team managed some remarkable successes.

"We made 11 live rescues, including a couple that were [still trapped] five, six days post-earthquake," said Russell.

A 3-day window

Three days,or 72 hours,is generally the window in which people trapped under rubble can survive without water.After that,survivability diminishes dramatically.

In Morocco, that window has now closed.

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Will I see them again? Terrified Moroccans in N.L. worry for families in earthquake

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Nadia Loutfi and Youssef Elmcharfi recount the panic and chaos they felt while trying that confirm dozens of family members were safe upon learning a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck the Kingdom of Morocco late Friday, about 70 kilometres south of Marrakech.

According to Reuters, Morocco's death toll currently stands at around 2,900 people, with about 2,500 injured,but authorities caution it's only a preliminary number.Many remote mountain villages were entirely cut off from help by impassable roads and on Tuesday aid had only started to trickle in.

It may be days or weeks before there's a full accounting of the number of casualties.

CBCvisited the village of Imi N'Tala,75 kilometres southwest of Marrakech. Usually, just over an hour and half from the city on dangerous, windy mountain roads,the journey is now taking closerto three hours due to heavy traffic and rock slides that block portions of the road.

Practically every structurein the village was in ruins. Many of the dead here were crushed when a giant slab of rock from the mountain above was dislodged by the force of the earthquake and fell on homes below. Residents told CBC that about 100 people, or half the village's population, died in the quake.

Rescue teams from the U.K., Spain and Qatar were all on site,aided by teams of sniffer dogs,in a search for survivors but it appears they found no one to save.

One young man in the village was in tears after learning his mother was confirmed to have been killed.

An older woman,Jamo,told us she lost two grandchildren and three nieces and nephews. She was sitting under a tarp with other women and children,worried for what would happen to them all.

"There is nothing here, as you can see, just the water and food people have brought us," Jamo said."Everything is destroyed."

Frantic digging

At the site of the community's mosque,dozens of villagers were using their hands and shovels to dig out debris,hoping to find the imam,Si Elmokhtar,who they believed was buried alive inside.

The imam's brother, Abderrahman Farrah, told us he had been calling his brother's cell phone non-stop for three days. OnMonday morning,he thought his brother might have picked up.

That triggered an even more frantic search.

"It is really hard, because people just keep using their hands [to dig], there isno other equipment to make this quick for us,"said Farrah.

The last part of the road to Imi N'Tala was too damaged or covered in debris for any heavy bulldozers or diggers to get through.

Spanish workers took sniffer dogs through the tangle of broken rocks,brick and concrete,but there were no obvious signs of life.

Several bodies were dug out of homes earlier in the day,and the pungent smell of decaying corpses indicated there were still many others to be discovered.

Many offers of help

Most survivors had spent the nights since the earthquake sleeping outside.Tents provided by the Moroccan government, which have been set up in hamlets further down the valley, had yet to arrive in Imi N'Tala.

Other countries including the U.S., France, Turkey and Israel have offered to send in more search and rescue professionals and humanitarian assistance, but the Moroccan government has not accepted these offers.

Neither the king, Mohammed VI,nor the country's president,Aziz Akhannouch,hasoffered an explanation why. Other officials have been quoted as saying the government wanted to avoid chaos or confusion on the ground.

Russell,the British search and rescue specialist,said despite a difficult first day, his team will continue to survey villages and look for openings to save people.

"I think I learned that we should never underestimate the human ability to survive and the will to survive," he said.

And even if so-called live rescuesaren't possible,Russell says the work of the search and rescue team serves a broader purpose.

"Our activities go beyond the rubble by being here, we show that the world outside cares about what is going on."