Earthquake / Building reconstruction: 22 days for technical assessments
Before construction can begin, the damage must be carefully assessed. Several departments are involved through the Interministerial Commission in charge of rolling out an emergency program to rehabilitate and help rebuild destroyed housing in disaster zones as quickly as possible.
Two ministries, namely the Interior ministry and the Ministry of Town and Country Planning, are on the front line. The Ministry of Planning has set up 50 expert missions, which have already begun their assessment work. In view of the initial reports of damage and losses, and given the urgency of the situation, a first technical damage survey mission is currently being prepared. Led by the Department of Quality and Technical Affairs and carried out by a team of experts and professional representatives, the mission will focus on a preliminary assessment of the damage caused by this earthquake to building structures and to the various morphologies of housing groups in the Atlas mountains and valleys, according to the concept note relating to technical reconnaissance of the damage caused by the Al Haouz earthquake to building structures, a copy of which is available to the L’Economiste. This information was confirmed by Minister Fatima-Ezzahra El Mansouri during her tour of the earthquake-affected areas of Al Haouz and Chichaoua. The mission of these experts is to collect information in order to build up a reliable database on the various types of structural damage caused by the earthquake and affecting different types of buildings in urban and rural areas. The experts have 22 days to complete their assessments. To save time, the experts are organizing into two teams: one dedicated to urban sites (Marrakech, Agadir, and Taroudant) and certain centers, and another assigned to hamlets in rural areas. In the urban areas, everything will be scrutinized before a decision can be made and sketches proposed. In the hamlets, experts will start with a post-seismic diagnostic sheet for each village.
For these hamlets, other parameters such as accessibility before and after the earthquake, and access to water, will be considered. The inspection must take several aspects into account. «This field survey will enable us to reflect on the organization of high-mountain dwellings, which have a unique identity and construction methods that need to be preserved, and to propose measures to strengthen the resilience of these groupings in the face of different forms of risk. The information gathered will be used to update the national seismic regulations RPS Version 2011 and the RPCT», states the concept note.
B.B.
