652 AGADIR LT.-CMDR. J. H. FopwHAM, C.B.E., R.N. Chief Officer, Kent Fire Brigade The earthquake which almost totally destroyed Agadir in a matter of seconds occurred shortly before midnight on-Monday, February 29, I960. News of the scale of the disaster was slow in reaching the outside world and it was not until people read their papers on the morning of Wednesday, March 2, that it was universally realized that this was one of the major catas- trophes of peacetime history. Fortunately for Morocco, however, this fact was recognized by some Governments and, in line with the inter- national tradition of responding to an S.O.S., substantial aid from a variety of sources began to converge on Agadir by sea and air within a paatter of hours of the calamity. To some elderly people the name Agadir struck a chord of memory as being a place where an ' incident' occurred in I910 involving a German cruiser, an incident which came near to sparking off World War I. To others it conjured up memories of holidays spent in interesting and pleasant surroundings; to most it meant nothing at all. The town lies in a wide bay at the southern end of the Moroccan coast. Up to about I940 it was small and unimportant and had probably changed little in the previous 500 years. About that time, however, one of the strange migrations of nature occurred and the sardine shoals, which since time immemorial had been found off the coast of Portugal, moved nearly a i,ooo miles south and established themselves off the coast of southern Morocco. This brought prosperity and expansion to Agadir and a thriving sardine fishing and canning industry sprang up. This was soon followed by the discovery of its attractions as a tourist resort and in the years following World War II a number of luxury hotels were built, together with blocks of flats, offices and modern public buildings, whilst the deep water harbour catered for an expanding export trade in fruit. The population of this boom town shot up from about 6,ooo in I936 to over 50,ooo at the time of the disaster. The civil airport, at which a large permanent French naval air base is located, is some six miles from the harbour and the small town of Inezgane is four or five miles further from Agadir beyond the air base. There is no railway serving the locality. No earthquake of a serious nature had ever been recorded in this part of the country and the construction of buildings, modem and ancient, in the town of Agadir completely disregarded such an eventuality. The Earthquake When the shock occurred on the night of February 29 the majority of the population were in bed. In the part of the town known as Tal- borjt, which was composed predominantly of box- like Arab dwelling-houses built of earth or inferior concrete without beams or reinforcement, most of the buildings disintegrated into rubble. In some cases walls were left standing, but very few, if any, of such houses were left with a roof. The 'New Town' where houses, shops, offices and large villa-type dwelling-houses were located, mostly of reinforced concrete construction, ap- peared at first glance to be in somewhat better shape. A fair number of these buildings were standing in whole or in part, although most of them were in fact badly damaged. Others, the Hotel Saada being a notable example, had com- pletely collapsed and concertinaed in the vertical plane. The so-called industrial quarter of the town was least damaged, although even here buildings were in all states, varying from com- pletely collapsed to relatively undamaged. The main roads were little affected, except on the reclaimed land adjacent to the harbour where there were wide cracks and undulations. The position immediately following the shock, although probably not at the time fully recog- nized, was that the town was to all intents and purposes totally destroyed, about one-third of the population were dead or trapped under debris, and the whole of the remainder were homeless. Such a situation was obviously basically similar to that which -would immediately follow -a-atomic attack on any town, but from then onwards such similarity in many respects ceased. Protected by copyright. on February 16, 2020 by guest. http://pmj.bmj.com/ Postgrad Med J: first published as 10.1136/pgmj.36.421.652 on 1 November 1960. Downloaded from
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652
AGADIRLT.-CMDR. J. H. FopwHAM, C.B.E., R.N.
Chief Officer, Kent Fire Brigade
The earthquake which almost totally destroyedAgadir in a matter of seconds occurred shortlybefore midnight on-Monday, February 29, I960.News of the scale of the disaster was slow inreaching the outside world and it was not untilpeople read their papers on the morning ofWednesday, March 2, that it was universallyrealized that this was one of the major catas-trophes of peacetime history. Fortunately forMorocco, however, this fact was recognized bysome Governments and, in line with the inter-national tradition of responding to an S.O.S.,substantial aid from a variety of sources began toconverge on Agadir by sea and air within a paatterof hours of the calamity.To some elderly people the name Agadir
struck a chord of memory as being a place wherean ' incident' occurred in I910 involving aGerman cruiser, an incident which came near tosparking off World War I. To others it conjuredup memories of holidays spent in interesting andpleasant surroundings; to most it meant nothingat all.The town lies in a wide bay at the southern
end of the Moroccan coast. Up to about I940 itwas small and unimportant and had probablychanged little in the previous 500 years. Aboutthat time, however, one of the strange migrationsof nature occurred and the sardine shoals, whichsince time immemorial had been found off thecoast of Portugal, moved nearly a i,ooo milessouth and established themselves off the coast ofsouthern Morocco. This brought prosperity andexpansion to Agadir and a thriving sardine fishingand canning industry sprang up. This was soonfollowed by the discovery of its attractions as atourist resort and in the years following WorldWar II a number of luxury hotels were built,together with blocks of flats, offices and modernpublic buildings, whilst the deep water harbourcatered for an expanding export trade in fruit.The population of this boom town shot up fromabout 6,ooo in I936 to over 50,ooo at the time ofthe disaster.The civil airport, at which a large permanent
French naval air base is located, is some six
miles from the harbour and the small town ofInezgane is four or five miles further from Agadirbeyond the air base. There is no railway servingthe locality.No earthquake of a serious nature had ever
been recorded in this part of the country and theconstruction of buildings, modem and ancient, inthe town of Agadir completely disregarded suchan eventuality.
The EarthquakeWhen the shock occurred on the night of
February 29 the majority of the population werein bed. In the part of the town known as Tal-borjt, which was composed predominantly of box-like Arab dwelling-houses built of earth or inferiorconcrete without beams or reinforcement, mostof the buildings disintegrated into rubble. Insome cases walls were left standing, but very few,if any, of such houses were left with a roof.The 'New Town' where houses, shops, officesand large villa-type dwelling-houses were located,mostly of reinforced concrete construction, ap-peared at first glance to be in somewhat bettershape. A fair number of these buildings werestanding in whole or in part, although most ofthem were in fact badly damaged. Others, theHotel Saada being a notable example, had com-pletely collapsed and concertinaed in the verticalplane. The so-called industrial quarter of thetown was least damaged, although even herebuildings were in all states, varying from com-pletely collapsed to relatively undamaged. Themain roads were little affected, except on thereclaimed land adjacent to the harbour wherethere were wide cracks and undulations.The position immediately following the shock,
although probably not at the time fully recog-nized, was that the town was to all intents andpurposes totally destroyed, about one-third of thepopulation were dead or trapped under debris,and the whole of the remainder were homeless.Such a situation was obviously basically similar tothat which -would immediately follow -a-atomicattack on any town, but from then onwards suchsimilarity in many respects ceased.
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FIG. i.-Aerial -view of the ruins of Agadir. 12,000 people are believed to have been killed.Photo: Associated Press.
The Life-saving PhaseThe situation during the first iz hours from
alt accounts must have been completely chaotic.The fire and police stations were destroyed, withcasualties, electricity was cut, leaving the town incomplete darkness, intensified by a fog of dustand, according to accounts of uninjured survivors,for a long period there seemed to be a quiteuncanny silence.At the French naval air base which, although
only distant some six or seven miles from the port,was quite undamaged, it was quickly recognizedwhat had occurred and parties of naval airmenwere organized and despatched in trucks to thetown. These Frenchmen effected a large numberofPindividual rescues from buildings in the ' NewTown', working entirely on their own initiative.To them the British subjects rescued from theruins of the Hotel Saada undoubtedly owe theirlives. There was no plan of control for the rescueoperations carried out by these parties nor wasthere any need for one. They were fully andrewardingly occupied with the tasks which theyfound all around them and upon which they couldonly make a tiny impact.
Daylight, revealed the full scale of the disaster.
Survivors were swarming about the streets, in thevicinity of their homes. The Bureau of PublicWorks was badly damaged, but the Director, aFrenchman, made the first attempt to place rescueoperations on some sort of an organized footing.He set up a control post near to his offices andfrom there proceeded to round up a considerablenumber of trucks which he dispersed to variousareas of the town with inastructions to pick upnon-ambulant survivors and free such people asthey could who were trapped. Despite this braveeffort to introduce a semblance of order, there isno doubt that the general situation throughoutTuesday was extremely confused.By nightfall thousands of people had streamed
out of the town, mostly on foot, and were campingout or merely squatting by the roadside. Somearmed police and a few soldiers had by thenarrived from other places and it is reported thatthey dealt summarily and effectively with a fewcases of attempted looting.The arrival of a considerable sized French fleet
from Teneriffe early on Wednesday and of aDutch cruiser from Las Palmas about I2 hourslater entirely altered the situation. Large partiesof sailors were landed to reinforce the Frenchmenalready at work andI were allocated, by the
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FIG. 2.-Rescue work in progress.Photo: Associated Press.
Director of Public Works, defined areas of thetown in which to operate.
Within these allotted zones the tasks of theforeign sailors were for the most part self-appointed and obvious and consisted of removingtrapped survivors from buildings and buryingthe dead.The landing parties were for the most part
equipped with picks, shovels, crowbars, shearsand oxy-acetylene cutting plant. The latter waslittle used as most of the reinforcement was ableto be cut quite easily and much quicker withshears. Many of the imposing looking modernbuildings which had wholly or partially collapsedwere of inferior construction, the concrete beingof poor quality and the reinforcing sparse, whichcaused them to disintegrate to a greater degreethan could be expected in similar buildings in thiscountry, a fact which undoubtedly facilitatedrescue work. As the ruins of practically everybuilding contained casualties, priority was quiterightly given to the rescue of those who wereeasiest to rescue, using for the most part barehands and hand appliances and occasionally lorriesand wire hawsers.
Casualties were located by sight or by sound.Little in the way of tunnelling and shoring was
resorted to and the number of dead brought outfrom the ruins far exceeded that of the living.American Army engineers flown in from Germanydid some useful demolition work at this stage tofacilitate rescue.
Pending the arrival of earth-moving machinery,brought in from the American naval base at PortLyautey and by the Moroccan Army, the Frenchand Dutch sailors worked ceaselessly diggingtrenches with picks and shovels and burying thedead as they were brought to them, on sitesallocated for the purpose just outside the town,by a constant stream of trucks. There was noquestion of certification of death or even ofidentification, it being regarded as a matter of theutmost urgency to get the bodies underground.With the arrival of mechanized excavators thiswork was speeded up enormously and the Frenchand Dutch were reinforced by a large contingentof the U.S. Air Force and by Marines from theheavy cruiser U.S.S. Newport News.By Thursday very large numbers of armed
police, members of the National Gendarmer,ie,had arrived and were given the task of clearingthe town of everybody not employed on rescuework. A curfew was imposed and enforced withguns. Twenty-five fire appliances from all over
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FIG. 3.-Spraying the ruins with D.D.T.Photo: Associated Press.
the country had also moved in under the commandof the Chief of the Moroccan Fire Service, aFrench officer trained in the Paris Fire Brigade,who set up his headquarters and base of operationson the football ground.By Friday the Moroccan Army had arrived in
force. Foreign sailors and troops were, with afew exceptions, withdrawn and a reasonably effec-tive control of all operations was possible. Oneof the first tasks of the Army was the strict scalingoff of access to the worst-hit areas of the townand, for a time also, the continuation of taskswhich the foreign troops had been performing,although living casualties were by then becomingrarities. Survivors who had been camping outnear to their ruined homes were rounded up andtransported clear of the town, where camps andfield hospitals were set up. As many of theinjured as possible were flown out by foreignaircraft. European survivors, most of whom wereFrench, were accommodated at the air base priorto being flown out.On Friday afternoon the decision was taken
that from then onwards priority was to be givento disinfection at the expense of rescue work inthose parts of the town which had been evacuatedand sealed off. This decision abandoned without
a doubt large numbers of living but trappedpeople to their deaths.The weather was extremely hot and the stench
of dead bodies and open sewers appalling. Flieswere swarming everywhere and in some placesrats were appearing. According to medical advicedelay in starting wholesale disinfection wouldhave invited a large-scale outbreak of epidemics.
Disinfection was carried out by German Armypersonnel, who had brought their own equipment.From Saturday morning onwards from dawn todusk low-flying aircraft continuously sprayed thetown with D.D.T. powder.
Powerful D.D.T. powder guns, mounted ontrucks, went from building to building spraying.Within a day there was not a fly to be seen andthe rat problem was under control through theuse of virus poison. The frightful smell whichhad made it necessary for troops and othersworking in the town to wear gauze filter maskswas concealed by that of D.D.T.
In this, the disinfection phase, the Fire Brigadeplayed an important part. Crews of firemen withportable pumps and water carriers filled with dis-infectant solution worked in close conjunctionwith Army demolition squads. As buildings weredemolished, so bodies were uncovered and the
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firemen buried them on the spot, having firstcovered them with quicklime. They then soakedthe contaminated debris with liquid disinfectant.From Friday onwards all bodies recovered, andthis was continually happening, were in anadvanced stage of putrefaction and dangerous tohandle. The wearing of P.V.C. gloves by thesefiremen was enforced. As was inevitable, someliving survivors were found and it is certain thatthere must have been others who were alive atthis time and who remained trapped and died,yet I did not once hear the wisdom of the decisionto disinfect at the expense of rescue work ques-tioned by anybody who had been at close quarterswith the problem.
Whilst disinfection and demolition were theorder of the day in the town itself, outside, greateremphasis was by Saturday being placed on theproblems of the survivors. Three tented campscatering for about 5,ooo each were set up, or-ganized by the ' Red Crescent' and ' Social Aid'and staffed by welfare workers from the NationalYouth Sports Organization, teenagers who werewell disciplined and who did a fine job of work,and by a number of Italian and other foreigndoctors and nurses who manned field hospitals.A constant stream of transport aircraft of manynations from Tuesday onwards flew out survivors
to a variety of destinations and at first there waslittle attempt made to record who had gonewhere. The Americans set up a beautifullyequipped field hospital in a hangar at the air base.
The Organization EvolvesDuring the first three days control must have
been very loose indeed and seems to have beenlimited to that performed by the Director ofPublic Works which has been described. FromThursday onwards, however, overall control waseffectively carried out in person by H.R.H. theCrown Prince Moulay Hassan, who had arrivedon Tuesday and made his headquarters in theundamaged town cf Inezgane, about ten milesfrom Agadir.The system cf control which evolved was
absolute, ruthless and very simple. The CrownPrince held his conferences in his tent pitched inthe garden of the Palace at Inezgane; he wasimmediately accessible to his advisers, to whomthe heads of Services stated their requirements.All instructions were given by word of mouth andthere were neither paper nor telephones in thetent. He made fiequent tours of inspection byhelicopter. He had arrived on Tuesday andbeyond ordering in the Moroccan Army and hispersonal advisers, had spent his first day touringthe stricken area, thus gaining a clear idea of thesituation with which he had to deal.The organization from Saturday was under two
headings, ' Dead Agadir' and ' Living Agadir'.In the case of the former, this involved the sealingoff and guarding of most of the town, demolitionof buildings and extrication and burial of corpsesuncovered in the process, and both overall anddetailed disinfection of the ruins and of allauthorized persons proceeding into or out of thesealed off zones. These problems were theresponsibility of one man, Colonel Dris, Governorof the Province. The officer responsible for' Living Agadir', Colonel Oufquir, had staffofficers working under him covering matters con-cerning the welfare, health and feeding of thesurvivors, and their removal by air lift. Thedivision of responsibilities between Colonels Drissand Oufquir was not a rigid one as Dr. Benhima,the Principal Medical Adviser, was available toboth of them, and he having direct access to theCrown Prince was able to give advice and instruc-tions to both. Welfare services in the survivors'camps were, as has been mentioned, run by thetwo organizations ' Social Aid' and ' Red Cres-cent ', each under the personal direction of oneof the Princesses of the Royal Family. Theseladies could and did by-pass Colonel Oufquirwhenever they wished. The Chief of Staff of theArmy also had direct access to the CrownPrince.
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AfterthoughtsAlthough the basic situation was initially
similar to that which one can imagine after anatom bomb, the way in which it developed wasvery different. As there was no flash there wereno primary fires and the absence of gas mainseliminated the most likely source of secondaryfires. There was, in fact, no fire situation andonly a few isolated outbreaks which burnt them-selves out. There was obviously no question ofradiation hazards or fall-out, nor was the possi-bility even considered of other incidents occurringelsewhere and this enabled a complete concentra-tion of all resources to be directed on the singleincident-Agadir.
In any large-scale disaster, some aiding forcesmay arrive before an effective centralized controlcan possibly become operative. Action as wastaken by the Director of Public Works in allocatingdefined zones of operation as a first priority is tobe commended, facilitating as it must and did thesubsequent placing of all operations on a reason-ably )rganized footing.
In the early phases it would have been un-thinkable for there to have been units fromdifferent services working in the same zones orsectors, yet separately controlled from outside,through their own different chains of command.Unity of command of all Services operating withina defined area and the availability and willingnessof all to tackle any task is the only thing thatmakes sense in the life-saving phase. At Agadirthis was easy and automatic as the work was doneby troops, but it makes me wonder whether C.D.columns ought not to be composite rather thanspecialized-a conception that was vetoed manyyears ago.The weather at Agadir made rescue operations
a race against time. Radiation might similarlycause this to be the case in a bombed city. Apolicy of rescuing those easiest to rescue first,where there is reason to think that there may notbe time to rescue everybody living must be theright one and the most rewarding use of resources.Tunnelling and shoring operations, taking num-bers of men a long time to perform to effectindividual rescues, could not possibly be justifiedin such circumstances.
Overall control, when it was established, wasabsolute, undivided and ruthless, three essentialswhich I find it hard to visualize in this countryin circumstances of war or peace. In Morocco
the temperament of the inhabitants and the con-stitution of the country made it natural that amember of the Royal Family should act in thisway and the Crown Prince, Moulay Hassan, roseto the situation splendidly. He it was who un-hesitatingly made the brave, but terrible, decisionto lay off rescue work and concentrate on dis-infection, a decision which in the light of themedical advice was undoubtedly right.My train of thought obviously ran to the control
system of our own war organization and I wasleft in some doubt as to whether it would haveoperated successfully in the circumstances ofAgadir, far easier though they were than thosevisualized in war. Even were all our Controllersblessed with the outstanding qualities of per-sonality necessary for their task, they would stillhave been hamstrung by the division of theirresponsibilities and the over-complication of ourplans. The conception of a Controller as a co-ordinator is now to me absurd; the only role forhim, which makes sense, is that of a commander,and men with the necessary qualities for the jobare not to be found very easily. Agadir convincedme that our need is to unify and to simplify.
All our planning has had to be based ondifferent people's ideas of the various situationswith which we might be faced. Although I amnot, I believe, entirely lacking in imagination, thehorror and demoralization at Agadir far exceededanything which I could have imagined had I notseen it for myself, yet, if put in its perspective inour war organization, it would have been but amere sub-area incident and a very over-simplifiedone at that. This makes me wonder if othersmay not perhaps also be underestimating the scaleof what we might be up against.The majority of problems arising from any
large-scale disaster involving widespread death,injury and displacement of persons must have amedical or public health component and fre-quently one which overrides all others, as was thecase in Agadir when the decision was taken,entirely on health grounds, to demolish and dis-infect at the expense of rescue work. Therewere few, if any, aspects of the relief operationsat Agadir concerning which advice, and at timesorders, from doctors would have been other thanvaluable and welcome and, in my view, theyshould play a much more prominent part at alllevels of control than is at present envisaged inour war plans.
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