Rescuers search for survivors, as aftershocks rattle Myanmar
MANDALAY (MYANMAR) – Rescuers braved aftershocks to search for survivors in the devastated city of Mandalay on Monday, after a huge earthquake killed at least 1,700 people in Myanmar and at least 18 in neighbouring Thailand.
The first quake, recorded at 7.7 magnitude, hit near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by an aftershock measuring 6.7 magnitude.
The shocks brought buildings crashing down, bridges and roads tumbling down, and widespread destruction could be seen in the city of more than 1.7 million people.
Win Lwin, a tea shop owner, picked his way through the ruins of a collapsed restaurant in his neighbourhood on Sunday, tossing bricks aside one by one.
“Around seven people died here” when the quake hit, he told AFP. “I’m hoping to find more bodies but I know that there can’t be any survivors.
A minor aftershock hit the following morning, sending people rushing out of one hotel for safety, after a similar tremor was felt late Saturday evening.
And an aftershock at about 2:00 pm (0730 GMT) — measured at 5.1-magnitude by the US Geological Survey — sent panicked people back into the streets and temporarily disrupted rescue work.
Myanmar’s ruling junta said Sunday in a statement that some 1,700 people were confirmed dead so far, around 3,400 injured and about 300 more missing.
But with reach of communications hampered in many other areas, the actual scale of the disaster is yet to be seen in the isolated military-ruled state, and the toll is expected to climb further.
Myanmar and Chinese responders searching for buried victims at a destroyed Buddhist examination hall in Mandalay on Sunday.
San Nwe Aye, sister of a missing 46-year-old monk from the collapsed hall, looked deeply distressed and told AFP she had no news on his condition.
“I want to hear him preaching the sound of him,” she said.
At a toppled apartment building in the city, rescuers believed they had saved the lives of a pregnant woman trapped under debris for more than 55 hours.
They even amputated her leg in order to release her, but when they managed to pull her free, she could not be revived and was declared dead.
Myriad challenges –
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing made an unusually rare plea for international aid on Friday.
Past military governments have refused foreign aid even in the aftermath of major natural disasters.
Four years of civil war ignited by a military coup in Myanmar have already laid waste to the country.
There have been reports of sporadic violence even after the quake, with one rebel group telling AFP on Sunday that seven of its fighters were killed in an aerial attack soon after the tremors.
Fighters opposed to the junta in the country announced a two-week partial ceasefire in quake-hit areas beginning Sunday, the insurgent “National Unity Government” said in a statement.
The UN said overnight that a critical shortage of medical equipment is impeding Myanmar’s response to the quake, and aid agencies have warned that the country is ill prepared to cope with the disaster.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies on Sunday issued an emergency appeal for more than $100 million to assist victims, and the World Health Organization said the quake was a top-level crisis and urgently issued its own appeal.
As the raging civil war had displaced some 3.5 million people, many of them at risk of hunger, even before the quake, the aid effort faced major obstacles.
Rescuers and aid have been pouring in from donor countries across the globe, with Thailand on Sunday sending 55 military personnel and six rescue dogs, along with cranes and diggers.
China dispatched 118 search and rescue workers and canine units, demolition equipment and field hospital systems, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
Bangkok building collapse –
On the other side of the border, in Thailand, rescuers in Bangkok on Sunday were working to pull out survivors who had become trapped when a 30-storey skyscraper that was under construction collapsed following the earthquake on Friday.
At least 18 fatalities were confirmed in the Thai capital, according to city authorities on Sunday, with 33 injured and 78 still unaccounted for.
The majority of the deaths were workers killed in the tower collapse, and most of the missing are presumed to be pinned beneath the enormous mound of wreckage where the skyscraper used to be.
The blast made the 22-year-old survivor, Burmese worker Kyaw Lin Htet, feel like he “lost consciousness”, he told AFP at the site on Sunday.
Sniffer dogs and thermal imaging drones have also been sent in to look for signs of life in the collapsed building, near the Chatuchak weekend market which is popular with tourists.