Andy Gregory28 March 2025 18:18

A rescue worker from Amarapura, an ancient city and now a township of Mandalay, has 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.

“We received calls for help from people from the inside, but we cannot help because we do not have enough manpower and machines to remove the debris, but we will not stop working.”

Andy Gregory28 March 2025 18:01

7.7 magnitude earthquake hits Myanmar, toppling buildings in Bangkok 1,300km away

Andy Gregory28 March 2025 17:45

Before the quake struck, the United Nations estimated that hundreds of thousands of civilians had been displaced by internal fighting, and there are now more than 3 million internally displaced people in Myanmar overall, with some 18.6 million people in need of humanitarian aid.

However, access issues and recent cuts to foreign assistance have devastated the already war-torn country. A 90-day freeze on foreign assistance programs announced earlier this year by US president Donald Trump has led to other cuts in services for refugees from Myanmar, including the shutdown of hospital care in camps in neighbouring Thailand where more than 100,000 are living, according to activists and Thai officials.

The US Geological Survey’s (USGS) earthquake hazards programme has suggested that fatalities could be between 10,000 and 100,000 people, and the economic impact could be as high as 70 per cent of Myanmar’s GDP.

According to Dr Roger Musson, an honorary research fellow at the British Geological Survey, such forecasts are based on data from past earthquakes and on Myanmar’s size, location and overall quake readiness.

Speaking to Reuters, Dr Musson said that the shallow depth of the quake – at just 6.2 miles, according to the USGS – meant the damage would be more severe: “This is very damaging because it has occurred at a shallow depth, so the shockwaves are not dissipated as they go from the focus of the earthquake up to the surface. The buildings received the full force of the shaking.”

He added: “It’s important not to be focused on epicentres because the seismic waves don’t radiate out from the epicentre – they radiate out from the whole line of the fault.”

Noting that the last major quake to hit the region was in 1956, Dr Musson said that homes in central Myanmar are unlikely to have been built to withstand seismic forces as powerful as those that hit on Friday.

Andy Gregory28 March 2025 17:14

As darkness fell in Bangkok, rescue workers continued to search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building, where scores of people were still feared missing.

(Sirachai Arunrugstichai/Getty Images)

(Sirachai Arunrugstichai/Getty Images)

Andy Gregory28 March 2025 17:14

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.

Andy Gregory28 March 2025 16:59

In Thailand, Bangkok city authorities have said that 10 people have been killed, 16 injured and 101 missing from three construction sites, including the high-rise responsible for at least eight of the confirmed deaths.

Thai rescue teams provide aid at a construction building collapse (Getty Images)

Andy Gregory28 March 2025 16:45

A 1,000-bed hospital in Myanmar’s capital Nyapyitaw was among the buildings that sustained damage from the earthquake, according to state media.

Agence France-Presse earlier reported that rows of people injured in the quake lay outside the hospital’s emergency department as a stream of casualties were brought there on Friday. The entrance to the emergency area itself was heavily damaged, and a car could reportedly be seen crushed under the concrete of the collapsed entrance.

Andy Gregory28 March 2025 16:31

Rooftop pool spills over side of skyscraper as Bangkok hit by earthquake tremors

Alex Croft28 March 2025 16:20