Earthquake rocks Thailand and Myanmar, triggering the collapse of a Bangkok high-rise

BANGKOK — A 7.7 magnitude earthquake rocked Thailand and neighboring Myanmar noon on Friday, inflicting the collapse of a high-rise constructing underneath building in Bangkok and forcing a whole lot of hundreds to evacuate from their properties and workplaces.

The noon temblor was adopted by a powerful 6.4 magnitude aftershock.

Attainable casualties from the constructing collapse close to Bangkok’s widespread Chatuchak market will not be but identified, police mentioned, and there was no quick info on what number of staff had been on the location on the time.

A dramatic video circulated on social media confirmed the multi-story constructing with a crane on prime collapsing right into a cloud of mud, whereas onlookers screamed and ran.

Individuals in Bangkok evacuated from their buildings had been cautioned to remain exterior in case there have been extra aftershocks.

The U.S. Geological Survey and Germany’s GFZ heart for geosciences mentioned the earthquake was a shallow 10 kilometers (6.2 miles), with an epicenter in Myanmar, in keeping with preliminary experiences.

“All of a sudden the whole building began to move. Immediately there was screaming and a lot of panic,” mentioned Fraser Morton, a vacationer from Scotland, who was in one in all Bangkok’s many malls searching for digicam gear.

“I just started walking calmly at first but then the building started really moving, yeah, a lot of screaming, a lot of panic, people running the wrong way down the escalators, lots of banging and crashing inside the mall.”

Like Morton, hundreds of individuals poured into Benjasiri Park from close by procuring malls, excessive rises and condominium buildings alongside Bangkok’s busy Sukhumvit Highway.

Many had been on telephones attempting to succeed in family members as others sought shade from the new early afternoon solar. Others stared up fearfully on the tall buildings within the densely packed a part of town.

“I got outside and then looked up at the building and the whole building was moving, dust and debris, it was pretty intense,” Morton mentioned. “Lots of chaos.”

The sound of sirens echoed all through central Bangkok and autos crammed the road, leaving a few of the metropolis’s already congested streets gridlocked. The elevated fast transit system and subway had been shut down.

Metropolis corridor declared town a catastrophe space to facilitate interagency support and emergency assist.

Paul Vincent, a vacationer visiting from England, was at a streetside bar when the quake struck.

“The next thing, everybody came on the street, so there was a lot of screaming and panicking, which obviously made it a lot worse,” he mentioned.

As he got here onto the road himself, he mentioned he noticed a high-rise constructing swaying and water was falling from a rooftop pool.

“When I saw the building, oh my God, that’s when … it hit me,” he mentioned. “There was people crying in the streets and, you know, the panic was horrendous really.”

In Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest metropolis and near the epicenter, the earthquake broken a part of the previous royal palace and buildings, in keeping with movies and pictures launched on Fb social media.

Whereas the world is susceptible to earthquakes, it’s usually sparsely populated, and most homes are low-rise buildings.

Within the Sagaing area simply southwest of Mandalay, a 90-year-old bridge collapsed, and a few sections of the freeway connecting Mandalay and Myanmar’s largest metropolis, Yangon, had been additionally broken.

Residents in Yangon rushed out of their properties when the quake struck. There have been no quick experiences of accidents or deaths.

Within the capital Naypyitaw, the quake broken non secular shrines, sending components toppling to the bottom, and a few properties.

To the northeast, the earthquake was felt in Yunnan and Sichuan provinces in China and triggered injury to homes and accidents within the metropolis of Ruili on the border with Myanmar, in keeping with Chinese language media experiences.

Movies that one outlet mentioned it had obtained from an individual in Ruili confirmed constructing particles littering a road and an individual being wheeled in a stretcher towards an ambulance.

The shaking in Mangshi, a Chinese language metropolis about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northeast of Ruili, was so sturdy that folks could not stand, one resident advised The Paper, a web-based media outlet.

A resident of Kunming, the provincial capital of Yunnan, advised The Paper that her ceiling lamp was swinging wildly and the shaking lasted greater than 10 seconds.

In Bangkok, alarms went off in buildings because the earthquake hit round 1:30 p.m., and startled residents had been evacuated down staircases of high-rise condominiums and motels.

The larger Bangkok space is house to greater than 17 million individuals, lots of whom dwell in high-rise flats.

Water from high-rise rooftop swimming pools sloshed over the facet as they shook, and particles fell from many buildings because the long-lasting earthquake rattled town.

“I have experienced earthquakes twice before in Myanmar, but that was only one second, one big bang, but here it went on for at least, I’d say, a minute,” mentioned Zsuzsanna Vari-Kovacs, a Hungarian resident of Bangkok, who had simply completed consuming at a restaurant when the quake hit.

“My husband was in a high-rise, I think that’s even worse.”

Thailand’s Division of Catastrophe Prevention mentioned the quake was felt in virtually all areas of the nation.

Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra referred to as an emergency assembly to evaluate the affect of the quake.