A powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake turned high-rise buildings to rubble and sent people rushing out of their homes in Myanmar and Thailand on Friday.
At least 1,700 have been killed, 3,400 people have been injured and 300 are missing in Myanmar, the country’s ruling military junta said amid warnings that the toll is expected to rise.
In Thailand, Bangkok authorities reduced the death toll to 18. Some 26 people have been injured and 76 others are missing at sites including at a high-rise building which collapsed, authorities said.
The quake struck at a depth of 10km, about 17.2km from Myanmar’s second-largest city of Mandalay, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
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The midday temblor was followed by a strong 6.4 magnitude aftershock, and people in Bangkok evacuated from their buildings were cautioned to stay outside in case there were more.
Shauna-Rose, an Irish backpacker in Bangkok, recalled scenes if “chaos” in the hours following the quake. She told The Independent: “The city was at a standstill, all the metros were stopped, malls were closed, people were frantically buying water from any shops that were still opened, the streets were jammed and there were people everywhere that you could barely even move.”
Three people died in Myanmar after a mosque partially collapsed, according to reports. The quake destroyed multiple buildings and damaged palaces in popular tourist areas of Myanmar – a country already affected by the ongoing civil war between the military and the armed rebel forces.
The scale of infrastructural damage is severe in the country, with the UN’s humanitarian agency saying on Saturday that aid access was being impeded by damaged roads and collapsed structures.
Social media posts from Mandalay showed collapsed buildings and debris strewn across streets of the city. The colonial era Ava bridge which connected the Mandalay and Sagaing regions, collapsed into the Irrawady River shortly after the first jolt.
A rescue worker from Amarapura, an ancient city and now a township of Mandalay, told Reuters that the bodies of 30 people had been recovered from collapsed multi-story apartment blocks.
“I have never experienced anything like this before – our town looks like a collapsed city," he told the news agency, estimating that about a fifth of the buildings had been destroyed.
The quake also brought down a skyscraper under construction in Bangkok, where at least eight people are reported to have been killed, with scores more missing. A rescue operation in underway to save dozens of trapped workers.
Witnesses in Bangkok said people ran out onto the streets in panic, many of them hotel guests in bathrobes and swimming costumes as water cascaded down from an elevated pool at a luxury hotel.
Water from high-rise rooftop pools sloshed over the side as they shook, and debris fell from many buildings as the long-lasting earthquake rattled the city.
According to Chinese media reports, the earthquake was also felt in China’s Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, and caused damage and injuries in the city of Ruili – which sits on the border with Myanmar.
Footage reported to have been captured in Ruili showed building debris littering a street and a person being wheeled in a stretcher toward an ambulance.
The shaking in Mangshi, a Chinese city some 60 miles northeast of Ruili, was so strong that people couldn't stand, one resident told The Paper, an online media outlet.
Additional reporting by agencies
