A Welsh firefighter who took part in the international rescue operation after last weekend’s earthquake in Morocco has been talking about the desperate search for survivors. Steve Davies was one of 62 search and rescue specialists from 13 fire and rescue services across the UK sent to provide life-saving support.
The epicentre of the 6.8 tremor was in the High Atlas Mountains, 44 miles from Marrakesh, and many of the worst affected areas are remote villages and towns. A team, which includes six Welsh experts from Mid & West Wales and South Wales fire services, were sent to the scene by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office after an urgent request for help from the Moroccan Government.
Deputy team leader Steve, who works for Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service, revealed the brave firefighters were being rocked by numerous aftershocks as they carried out their frantic search for survivors.
Steve – dad to daughters Olivia, 19, and 16-year-old Katie – said the toughest thing had been seeing children grieving the loss of loved ones. He said: “We’re trained professionals and used to doing what we do, but seeing some of the impact on families we encounter is still tough.
“I met a young lad of about 11 or 12 whose mum was still missing in a building we were searching. We could find no signs of life tragically. It’s never nice to have to see anybody, let alone a child, go through that sort of pain and distress. I’ve got two daughters and you can’t help putting yourself in the position the earthquake survivors are in, desperately hoping to find family. It is heartbreaking. It has been tough.”
The 51-year-old, from Gower, Swansea, has also been talking about what conditions are like for the firefighters out there: “There’s been quite a lot of aftershocks in Morocco. We had a reasonably large one on Wednesday and one that measured 4.6 on the Richter scale on Thursday. It was nowhere as big as obviously the main shock which was 6.8, but it was enough to shake us about a bit.
“Fortunately, there were no casualties in the village caused by the most recent aftershock. We’re already dealing with a lot of unstable structures and another building came down in the village where we were working.
“It might sound odd but I’m sort of used to aftershocks now. I was also out on the Turkey earthquake deployment earlier this year. The first few times it happens, it is quite unusual to you and you think, ‘I am I dizzy. I feel a bit wobbly here’. Then you realise it is an aftershock.
“Now that I have experienced it a few times, your brain instantly recognises it’s an aftershock. You get conditioned to it and that experience means you can react. We had to evacuate one of our rescue teams who were working on a site yesterday. As soon as the aftershock hit, we blew our whistles and pulled the guys off the rubble pile and let everything settle.
“I try not to egg up how dangerous things are, but we are incredibly well trained and drilled to make sure everyone on the team comes back safe.”
The UK-ISAR team is supporting the response in two remote areas of the Atlas Mountains, near the epicentre of the devastating natural disaster. The British rescuers have been using specialist search equipment including seismic listening devices, concrete cutting and breaking equipment , and propping and shoring tools to save lives.
Steve admitted the hunt for survivors was harder than what they faced in Turkey because of the rural location of the destruction. He explained: “Because of the construction of the buildings and type of buildings the chances of people surviving are much less than Turkey because there are less air pockets in which people can survive.
“The buildings up here in the mountains are mainly one or two storey houses rather than tower blocks. We’ve not yet encountered any entombed live casualties so far, but we have been involved in evacuation and rescues from damaged buildings and we’ve also been providing medical assistance as and when we’ve been needed.
“The rescues we’ve performed have been getting people out of seriously damaged buildings before they collapse entirely. There was one yesterday where the lady had quite a nasty open fracture on her ankle and that’s why she couldn’t get herself out. We needed to get into that building, stretcher her up, and carry her out of there.”
“We are trying to reach as many people as we can. Some of the travel times are massive. The roads are treacherous – they are absolutely desperate. There’s been a lot of movement in the mountains triggering landslides on what were probably already pretty hazardous roads before the earthquake hit.
“You don’t get much sleep on a deployment like this because even when you do get down time, it is hard to just switch off. We took a team up into the mountains and because of the travel times, we ended up having to sleep up there. We jumped in with a Spanish team and just slept on the floor of one of their main tents on a roll mat in sleeping bags.
“You don’t get the best of sleeps but compared to the human suffering the locals are going through, we have nothing to complain about.”
He added: “Our mandate is very much we are here to rescue survivors – and as many as we can find. Unfortunately, that does mean sometimes, we do have to walk over and past deceased victims, but every second is precious and the clock is ticking to get live survivors out as we find them.
“We do assist occasionally with recovery of bodies, but predominantly we are here to save lives.”
Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said: “The UK Government is proud that brave Welsh firefighters and medics have been at the very heart of our efforts to help the Moroccan people in their hour of need. Both the UK-International Search And Rescue and UK-Emergency Medical Team pool world-leading expertise from across Britain to make a real difference in reacting to humanitarian disasters around the globe.”
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source: Wales+Online