Family members dug with their bare hands through rubble in search of loved ones buried by Myanmar’s powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake on Saturday, as countries around the world raced to provide life-saving aid.
The official death toll in Myanmar soared to 1,644 but was expected to continue rising, as a country already ravaged by civil war struggled to come to terms with the devastation centred on Mandalay, its second-biggest city and a former capital.
Power supplies across the country have been affected, and with no access to heavy machinery or immediate help from the military junta, local residents and volunteer rescue workers struggled to reach victims buried under the wreckage.
In neighbouring Thailand, dozens of people were still feared trapped under a partly built skyscraper, which wobbled and came down in a huge plume of dust as the earthquake hit at 1.20pm local time on Friday, when scores of workers were inside the 33-storey structure.
Myanmar’s junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, visited Mandalay on Saturday to assess the damage caused by the earthquake, state media said, a day after he made a rare appeal for international aid.
China has sent two rescue teams as well as a large shipment of humanitarian aid to its neighbour, and its president, Xi Jinping, spoke with General Min Aung Hlaing to express his “deep sorrow”. India, Russia, South Korea, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand all pledged personnel or financial support, while the UK branch of the UN’s humanitarian agency launched a public fundraiser for earthquake victims.
Eyewitness reports began emerging on Saturday from the worst-hit regions in Myanmar, a country that has largely quashed independent and international media since the military seized power in a 2021 coup, the start of a now deeply-entrenched civil war.
Htet Min Oo, 25, narrowly survived when a brick wall collapsed on him, trapping half of his body. His grandmother and two uncles remained buried, and despite his efforts, he was unable to free them.
“There’s too much rubble, and no rescue teams have come for us,” he told Reuters, breaking into tears.
One rescue worker was attempting to free 140 trapped monks from a collapsed building in Amarapura, Mandalay.
“We do not have enough manpower or machines to remove the debris, but we will not stop working,” said the worker, who was not named.
Some residents were appealing for machinery on Facebook. One wrote that members of their family had been crushed under the rubble of a mosque and “we desperately want to recover their bodies”.
In the capital, Naypyidaw, which is more than 150 miles away, crews worked on Saturday to repair damaged roads, while electricity, phone and internet services remained down for most of the city.
The earthquake brought down many buildings, including multiple units that housed government civil servants, but that section of the city was blocked off by authorities on Saturday.
In Thailand, at least six people have been found dead so far, with 26 injured and nearly 50 still missing as of Saturday afternoon.
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.”
Most of those who died in Bangkok were workers on the skyscraper that collapsed near the capital’s Chatuchak market, a tourist favourite.
Anxious loved ones waited outside the mangled remains of the building, a project being developed by a Chinese firm on behalf of the Thai government.
Rescuers were racing against time to search for the missing, with more than a dozen still believed to be trapped alive inside the rubble over 24 hours after the disaster struck.
Naruemol Thonglek, 45, broke down as she looked through the huge heap of rubble where her husband and five friends were believed trapped.
“I was praying that they had survived,” she told the Associated Press. “But when I got here and saw the ruin – where could they be? In which corner? Are they still alive?
“I am still praying that all six are alive. I cannot accept this. When I see this I can’t accept this. A close friend of mine is in there, too,” she said.
Waenphet Panta said she had spoken to her daughter, Kanlayanee, just an hour before the earthquake.
“I am praying my daughter is safe, that she has survived and that she’s at the hospital,” she said, Kanlayanee’s father sitting beside her.
Paul Vincent, a tourist 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 said, recalling the chaos that followed as people rushed to safety.
Additional reporting by agencies