On September 8, 2023, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains, marking the country’s deadliest seismic event in recent history.
The disaster claimed nearly 3,000 lives, injured more than 18,000 people and damaged about 60,000 homes, especially in remote regions like Al Haouz and Taroudant provinces. Entire communities lost shelter, access to basic services and vital infrastructure, forcing families to rebuild their lives from the ground up.
Initial Response
The first wave of aid came directly from Moroccans themselves. With generosity, they came in large numbers to provide their fellow citizens with food, blankets, and other necessities for survival.
Immediately after the earthquake, Caritas Morocco intervened, mobilising its sister Caritas organisations to complement state and NGO interventions. Caritas Morocco chose to focus on the most vulnerable zones and groups, expanding its areas of intervention around the earthquake’s epicenter in the Al Haouz region.
Destruction in this province was extensive due to the scale of the devastation and the dispersion of affected villages, particularly those in hard-to-reach areas because of damaged roads and lack of transport. Caritas Morocco also intervened in Ouarzazate province, in south-central Morocco, providing services in the areas of shelter and drinking water.
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Activities carried out included the construction of water reservoirs, drilling and equipping wells, installing polyethylene pipes, and restoring water access points. It also supported certain projects in Taroudant province.
Many residents spent the night sleeping on rubble-strewn streets, fearful of aftershocks. Children and families displaced by the Morocco earthquake will need shelter, safe water, medical care, protection and psychosocial support. Morocco earthquake survivors will need help to rebuild their lives.
Expected heavy rains in autumn and snowfall in winter added to the urgency in the delivery of aid that would protect life and livelihoods in many communities.
Our response during this first phase of the project included provision of:
- Winterised transitional shelters and NFI distributions under the sector of Shelter/Non- Food Items (S/NFI)
- Mental Health and Psycho-Social Support (MHPSS)
- Protection activities where necessary.
Much of the assistance provided has been Shelter-related in the form of tents, bedding, and other household NFIs. Fire: Much of the material distributed is highly flammable, and many displacement sites are crowded, leading to a significant risk from fire, particularly as winter approaches.
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Changes in subterranean water routes are being reported in many communities, and this may lead to heightened health concerns as both pre-and post-disaster WASH facilities may be inappropriately placed to avoid contamination, and communities may require additional assistance with water piping and storage.
Death and injury have left many people traumatized, newly widowed, or disabled. These increased vulnerabilities may be compounded by pre-existing vulnerabilities caused by poverty and prolonged limited access to quality health care and education.
The outpouring of assistance from the Moroccan government and community means that most immediate shelter and NFI needs are now covered or soon will be. Community concerns are now turning to insulation and heating.
Area-Based Coordination and Camp Management: Addressing many issues, such as WASH and Fire hazards, will be affected by each community’s ability to effectively coordinate the sporadic and diverse assistance they are receiving, as well as their ability to manage temporary camps well.
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Government Initiatives and Financial Aid
In response, the Moroccan government introduced a five-year recovery project valued at approximately 120 billion dirhams (about $11.7 billion). The plan prioritizes rehousing, infrastructure upgrades and social and economic development.
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A central feature of the plan, the “supervised self-construction” model, allows affected residents to rebuild their homes using government financial support and architectural guidance. Reconstruction efforts focus on the most severely affected areas, including the provinces of Al Haouz, Chichaouoa, Taroudant, Marrakech, Ouarzazate and Azilal.
The project aims to reach 4.2 million people. Funding comes from the national budget, international aid and various public and private contributions. USAID committed $12.6 million to support Morocco’s earthquake recovery project.
People whose houses had been affected by the earthquake were told by the government they would receive money to enable them to either rebuild or repair their houses, depending on the level of damaged sustained.
In response to survivors’ needs, the Moroccan government promised direct aid of 30,000 dirhams per household (about €2,735) and up to 140,000 dirhams (about €12,765) for each destroyed home, along with 80,000 dirhams for its restoration. Eligible families receive up to 140,000 dirhams (approximately $13,600) to cover reconstruction and temporary housing needs.
Community-Led Initiatives
In Ait Bourd, a Moroccan architect introduced an insulated, earthquake-resistant home design capable of replacing about 50,000 destroyed homes. The Atlas Foundation partnered with local communities to support participatory planning and build capacity, ensuring that villagers guided the rebuilding process themselves.
In Talat N’Yaaqoub, residents organized teams to clear rubble and distribute supplies. University students from Marrakech launched mobile clinics and provided psychological support for survivors.
CARE Maroc and its local partners were among the first organizations to respond, distributing tents, food baskets and dignity kits to communities impacted by the earthquake in 21 villages. CARE Maroc has helped build 10 prefabricated preschools, as well as safe spaces for women and children in partnership with local organizations.
CARE Maroc has also distributed shelter items like tents, blankets and mattresses to more than 5,000 people, and supported economic recovery by continuing to offer assistance to village savings and loans associations as well as 25 village cooperatives.
Before the earthquake, Zahra participated in the Al-Izdihar (prosperity) savings group and had signed up for literacy classes with CARE in the hope of generating more income to better support her family as the head of her household and main breadwinner. Today, with support from CARE, Zahra has been able to revive her poultry farming business in the backyard of her destroyed home.
These local initiatives did more than meet immediate needs-they also strengthened community resilience and laid a foundation for long-term recovery.
Challenges and Reconstruction Efforts
Despite the ambitious plan, progress remains slow. By 2024, only around 1,000 of the targeted 55,000 homes had been built. Labor shortages, rising material costs and difficult mountain terrain have created bottlenecks.
Landslides left many roads blocked by debris and boulders, preventing emergency services and aid convoys from reaching those in need. The government also faced criticism for limiting foreign aid.
Many of the communities located within a few hours’ travel of urban centers appear to function more as satellite suburbs than rural agricultural communities, with many residents speaking of commuting for work, education, or health care. Adoption of modern building techniques in these communities is not only inevitable but likely sensible as local construction labor needs compete with better-paid urban jobs, and access to modern materials makes less labor-intensive options more viable.
However, in the more remote communities of the High Atlas Mountains, the region’s unique indigenous architecture is intrinsically linked to the history and culture of the people. Preserving the inherently earthquake-resilient architecture of these areas may also boost the vital tourism industry in areas where climate change and urban migration are making traditional livelihoods less viable.
Poor quality construction on soft soils, using an ad-hoc mixture of modern and traditional materials, has resulted in almost total destruction in many peri-urban ‘satellite’ communities.
Assessments and Repairs as Emergency Shelter: A key concern of the affected community is ensuring they have adequate shelter before winter. While many households have been displaced due to severe building damage, many more are displaced through fear of aftershocks and concern about the safety of damaged buildings.
This reaction is normal and valid as both risks are real, but displacement through fear will most likely reduce quite rapidly as winter approaches and aftershocks diminish. Housing damage varies greatly between communities, with some communities almost 100% destroyed but most with only partial damage.
One potential challenge is that communities may commence repairs independently before large-scale reconstruction programs are fully operational. This may then lead to the adoption of suboptimal construction practices and heightened safety risks. Rapid Assessment and Repair programs for Emergency Shelter should not aim to fully repair whole houses, as in many cases, this will be both time-consuming and expensive and may affect rights to further assistance.
Implementation of emergency assessment and repairs programs should include the provision of technical advice by small teams of engineers/masons and community mobilizers trained in the common vernacular building systems of the villages they are assisting (as described below).
While the shelter recommendations outlined above focus largely on the technical guidance needed to Build Back Safer, communities will also face a range of other shelter and Non-Food Item challenges. Individual households may face a shortage of essential household goods damaged in the earthquake, such as cooking equipment, furniture, or bedding, or else they may need support to procure or transport building materials or labor.
Small teams of engineers/masons and social mobilizers trained on the local vernacular construction techniques in that area should be deployed to each community to train local masons and residents on applying agreed key messages and guidelines to their specific contacts. Ideally, programs to train communities on appropriate repairs should be instigated as quickly as possible.
Assisting communities to better understand what fell and why and how to avoid it in the future can help many deal with trauma while ensuring communities Build Back Better, not worse. Rapid assessments and training on minor repairs may also help avert further aid dependency and any onset of lethargy as communities wait in the hope of future assistance.
Role of OpenStreetMap
The Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) and its regional Open Mapping Hub in West and Northern Africa (WNAH) identified urgent mapping needs and mobilized OpenStreetMap (OSM) contributors around the world to crowdsource information in the impacted area.
WNAH and the local OSM community in Morocco coordinated the mapping efforts, directing volunteers to map priority areas alongside other stakeholders through HOT’s Tasking Manager. Within 48 hours of mapping activities, 310 contributors around the world had contributed 32,450 buildings and 530 km of roads to OSM using pre-disaster imagery, providing the necessary base map to support decision-making.
The OSM data proved immensely valuable for World Central Kitchen (WCK), an organization that provides food for communities facing disaster.
To strengthen the capacity of the local communities in Morocco to contribute to disaster mapping and use open data for their needs, the WNAH is currently collaborating with the local OSM community leads.
Strengthening efforts to create pre-disaster base data layers will enhance the speed of damage mapping. This not only supports response efforts but also provides valuable data immediately.
Building Materials and Construction Techniques
Initial field investigations showed no significant difference in the seismic performance of either traditional or modern construction systems. Both forms performed well when built correctly and failed when poorly constructed.
As in other similar disasters, the Miyamoto team encountered the tendency by some to blame the dominant building material rather than construction quality.
The number of damaged and/or collapsed concrete structures provides stark evidence that poor construction quality is the primary cause of failure, not modern versus traditional material systems.
Traditional vernacular construction systems do, however, require specific structural analysis. When certain techniques, such as the usage of flat rocks with good interlocking and thick 50 cm walls, roof beams that penetrate through walls, and bedrock foundations, are used, structures become nigh-on indestructible, performing well in earthquakes as witnessed by the many undamaged, well-built stone structures in remote villages close to the epicenter.
However, it was clear in many buildings that some of these good practices have been lost or forgotten over the long period since the last significant earthquake, which occurred over 100 years ago. With such a long interval between seismic events, a diminishing perception of risk has led many owners and contractors to cut corners for construction speed and reduced labor.
The modern construction observed in the affected area consisted mainly of a confined masonry system with concrete blocks or stone and mud in-fill. This system is well-defined in many countries and, when built correctly, performs exceptionally well against seismic loads. On the other hand, when poorly built ’the results can be catastrophic.
Stone masonry construction is predominant in the Atlas range, all the way to the epicenter, and is also a characteristic feature of the historical center of Marrakech, Medina.
The seismic performance of houses constructed with round stones was often inadequate, primarily due to the round stones’ inability to interlock, leading to them rolling off one another; angular stones are preferable due to their interlocking ability and improved load transfer.
The most frequently observed type of damage is wall collapse, leading to roof collapse as the beams lose their support. Timber beams can punch through the walls, causing localized and complete roof collapse.
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