The text-message alert came in the middle of the night: A massive earthquake had hit Morocco. French volunteers scrambled to pull together a nine-person search-and-rescue team, listening devices and other gear to look for people buried under rubble.
The only thing the French aid workers didn’t have was a green light from Morocco to hop on a flight, which could have landed them in the North African country’s disaster zone little more than 24 hours after the September 8 quake that killed more than 2900 people and injured at least 5530 others in flattened villages and townhouses.
“The green light never came,” said Arnaud Fraisse, the team’s coordinator and founder of aid group Rescuers Without Borders.
“All of our team members who train regularly year-round for this type of thing are miserable that they couldn’t leave and put their skills to use.”
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