Friday, January 19, 2024 – Tizi-nTest, Morocco
Jan 24th, 2024 by rallyadmin
On September 8th, 2023, just after 11PM, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck in the Atlas mountains approximately 20 kilometers from Tizi-n-Test pass. Over 2,900 people died that night in the mountain hamlets on both sides of the high mountain pass.
During last year’s Banjul Challenge, we stayed at the top of the pass in a small hotel, La Belle Vue. We had planned to stay there again this year and had made prepaid reservations before the earthquake. We soon learned that the hotel had been severely damaged, destroyed the owner told us, so we booked at another hotel, La Haute Vue, a few kms closer to the epicenter. Probably not our best decision.
Of course, we had no idea if the road which runs north/south through the pass, would even be open. The odds were that if the road, a major route from Marrakesh through the Atlas range, hadn’t been totally destroyed, it would be open. We were not prepared for the scope of the damage when we started up the road to the pass.
We had been following highway N10 from Gorges du Dades and hadn’t seen any damage at all as we neared the turnoff to the R403 road to Tizi-n-Test. Around the corner an a km up the road there is a tent village on the left with the tents being removed and a more permanent village of container type housing that the earthquake survivors have moved to from the tent village. I notice an ominous detail, the construction crew poured concrete pillars to place the little houses on and they have what looks like permanent underground utilities going to each house. They are planning for these people to be here for a long time. This does not bode well for what’s farther up this road closer to the epicenter.
The sun is shining down in the valley but there are clouds clinging to the tops of the range. Rain isn’t forecast but the dark gray cloud bottoms indicate otherwise. We start the climb up the road.
The first road damage we see is a long 3-4 inch crack running up the road on the down slope side of the tarmac. The crack runs for about 50 meters until the road starts one of the seemingly endless switchbacks and curves. Around the next curve we see rock and gravel debris that has obviously dropped down the hill and just pushed to the side of the road out of the way of traffic.
The higher we drive, the more debris and damage we see. We are starting to see huge boulder that have come down the mountain side that have crashed through the roadside armco barrier. In some places there is so much rock debris that it has been push over the edge of the road. In many places with switchbacks, pushing the debris over the edge can’t be done because the debris will just crash on to the road below.
Where possible the debris has been moved to areas that have become wide pull offs provide a view down the mountainside and into the little hamlets that dot the area. The view is tragic. The hamlets are almost all completely destroyed, roofs collapsed, walls shattered. Some of the houses are of more recent construction with reinforced pillars and lintels unlike the older building that are just mortared cement block construction.
Some of the newer houses still have their roofs but many have lost there walls which are constructed of mortared brick and block. The concrete pillar construction has survived in many cases but the collapsing walls were still responsible for many of the fatalities, dropping on sleeping people during the nighttime tremblor. The block buildings tended to be completely flattened.
About halfway up the road there are two more large tents camps. We don’t see any modular buildings being placed here. The irony is that at the base of the mountain where the temperatures are quite nice, the survivors are being moved in to proper shelter. Up higher where the
As we near the top of the pass, the road is seriously damaged. There is only one narrow lane for traffic and water is running everywhere. My guess it the shaking from the quake has disturbed the rock structure enough so that the underground water pathways have changed. No doubt, that’s just one of the myriad changes caused by the quake.
Near the top of the pass, we enter the cloud layer which lowers he visibility just to make the driving that much more interesting. We are following the road on Google Maps and we are approaching a switchback wehere we should be able to see La Bell Vue but the clouds are hiding the hotel.
A couple more turns and we pop out of the clouds and drive around the last corner and there is La Belle Vue, surprisingly intact though with many cracks in the walls that are being patched with mortar. In a phone call between Clemo and the owner, Clemo had been told that the hotel was “destroyed”. Obviously not. Of course, that phone call was just a few days after the earthquake and the owner mot likely didn’t know the extent of the damage. By the looks of all the other damage on the mountain, it’s amazing that there was as little damage as there is.
We stop and go into he hotel to find the owner. A worker greets us and calls for the owner. He doesn’t recognize us until Clemo shows him a picture of the huge dinner he prepared on no notice last year. He’s excited that we are back and there are vigorous hand shakes all around.
He tells us that the hotel is still pretty much intact and that the damage is being repaired. He will reopen and everyone has survived. We tell him that we are very relieved that he, his family and the hotel have survived and that we will be back next year.
Back to the cars. Place another OUCH sticker on the van carcass on the precipice that has miraculously and take some photos of the small concrete building just below the van that hasn’t survived. Then on to our hotel for the night, La Haute Vue, just another kilometer up the road at the very top of the pass.
Google Maps completely mis-locates the hotel and just as we crest the top of the pass, the clouds clear and there’s the hotel next to the huge sign marking the top of the pass. We drive up the narrow dirt road to the parking area between the hotel cafe and the hotel dormitory and park the car. We are here.
Why we are here is another question entirely. It’s understandable that one might stay in an active earthquake zone. People go to San Francisco, always on the verge of the “Big One” without thinking. It’s quite another thing to stay 20 kilometers from the epicenter that just a few months ago had killed nearly 3,000 people in this very area. On this type of trip, a state of denial is helpful and, occasionally, required.
The pass is very windy, damp and cold. The rooms are unheated and the hotel owner is busily starting propane heaters in all of the rooms in the separate building the houses the guest rooms. Soon they are quite warm. We won’t be able to use the heaters overnight but there are piles of blankets so we should be good for the night.
Simon and Adam, Team 12, are already there. They have come up the pass from the north side and they have similar tales of the devastation all along the route up the mountain. And there is a young British man, Alex, who is riding a KTM (and fixing the usual electrical issues that the KTM bikes are prone to developing) and headed south. We all start comparing notes about the damage that we have seen and the tragedy of it all.
To celebrate joining up, we break out our hidden stashes of gin, vodka, rum or whatever and toast to the slowly clearing sky. What are we doing here?
Later, we have a tajine (kefta or chicken) dinner in the toasty warm cafe dining room which is heated by a roaring fire in the fireplace right next to out table. Just before the food is server, the owner announces that he has beer. Yes, please!! Morocco is a Muslim kingdom and any beer, wine or alcohol is officially prohibited by the Koran difficult to next to impossible to find outside the major cities. This an unexpected treat.
Dinner over and we’re back to the rooms for the night. Turn off the heater and into bed. Tomorrow back down the mountain and on our way south to TanTan Plage.
Obi-wan