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Join on Telegram Rabat – Search and rescue efforts led by volunteers are continuing a week after contact with a Moroccan teen was lost during a hike in Austria.
Rida Zoundri, a 19 year old Moroccan travelling through Austria, was last in contact with his mother last Sunday, when he was in the vicinity of Innsbruck. According to his uncle Hamid Zoundri, the teen “had said he wanted to touch the clouds with his hands,” during this conversation.
Shortly after, Rida was not responding to phone calls on WhatsApp, and it seemed that the third attempt to call him was rejected from his phone. After a fourth try by his mother she was finally able to speak to him. When she did, he sounded peculiar.
Hamid recalled that the youth sounded “disoriented and spoke strangely slow,” as he spoke to his mother. Rida “complained of chest pain and said he could barely use his numb fingers.”
According to Hamid, in a final half hour phone call with Rida, the youth could be heard walking, as his mom asked him to call the local emergency number.
The last signal from his phone was detected around 7:10 PM Sunday, and it has remained silent ever since. Most of Rida’s personal belongings, including his passport, laptop, and clothes were discovered in his hotel room.
Rida’s uncle Hamid travelled to Austria in search of the lost teen. Him and roughly a dozen relatives were joined by a group of search and rescue volunteers with trained dogs. The group has been traversing the mountains around the area, searching in vain for the teen.
Hamid said the group had two “really dangerous” paths that they had yet to explore. One path was covered in ice and Hamid said that if that is where Rida fell, “he would have ended up in the thick vegetation and snow,” which would explain the hypothermia-like qualities that Rida appeared to be displaying in his phone call with his mother.
Unfortunately, it seems that Austrian officials are recalling many resources, including a search helicopter, that they were using to search for Rida. Hamid is understandably angry at the situation, asking “why are they stopping so quickly? It’s mountainous, but not the Himalayas? It’s not about a search in the Brazilian rainforest, is it?”
Still, the Rida’s family and many volunteers still remain hopeful that they can find traces of the teen as they continue the search. Hamid said that a group of volunteers, some of them “military trained,” are en route to the search area from the Netherlands.
Hamid hopes these volunteers will be better trained to search “the more risky places,” which previous search parties have not been able to securely access to.
Hypothermia, the lowering of the body’s core temperature, is a dangerous affliction that causes confusion, numbness, and disorientation, and can take effect in as little as five minutes. After a week, Hamid admits the chances of finding his relative is “quite small,” but he still remains determined to bring Rida home to his family.
