Chaos in Southeast Asia as 7.7 Magnitude Earthquake Devastates Region

A powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Southeast Asia on Friday shook Myanmar and neighboring Thailand with estimates of potential deaths being as high as 100,000 people.Officials with the United States Geological Service confirmed to The New York Sun that given the size and scope of the tremors, which had its epicenter near Myanmar’s second largest city of Mandalay, the number of deaths could be anywhere between 10,000 to 100,000 people across the region.“Our models estimate this is a high-impact event,” a research geophysicist with the USGS, William Yeck, told the Sun. “We classify the impact of events using a color system ranging from green to red, and our impact estimates place this squarely in the red category.” “We estimate 796,000 people were exposed to violent shaking, which can result in significant fatalities.”The quake affected a large swath of the region, including at Bangkok, Thailand where eight people were killed and dozens potentially buried under the rubble when a skyscraper under construction collapsed.The crane-topped high-rise near Bangkok’s Chatuchak market can be seen falling like a house of cards in a video circulating on social media and creating a massive plume of ash and dust as onlookers flee in panic from the destruction. One construction laborer was killed as rubble falling from the sky crushed his truck, while others were struck by the debris, according to the Associated Press. Police officials in the Thai capital said to ABC News that search and rescue missions will continue into the night as nearly 100 people are still missing, adding that there were nearly 320 construction laborers trapped inside the rubble.Elsewhere in the city, people were evacuated from their buildings and urged to stay outside due to aftershocks from the tremblor.“All of a sudden, the whole building began to move. Immediately, there was screaming and a lot of panic,” a tourist from Scotland, Fraser Morton, who was shopping for camera equipment in one of the city’s many malls, said to the AP. “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.”“I got outside and then looked up at the building and the whole building was moving, dust and debris, it was pretty intense. Lots of chaos.”The Earthquake — which erupted in a sparsely populated area prone to seismic events — was followed by a powerful 6.4 magnitude aftershock. Friday’s incident left a former royal palace and several buildings damaged. In the nearby Sagaing region, a 90-year-old bridge collapsed, and sections of a vital highway that connects Mandalay with Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, were also damaged. Myanmar’s military-run government declared a state of emergency in six regions across the country, including the capital of Naypyitaw, but a prolonged civil war has made rescue and recovery efforts difficult.“This earthquake could not come at a worse time for Myanmar. More than three million people remain internally displaced from armed conflict that has raged since the 2021 military coup,” a Myanmar researcher for humanitarian organization Amnesty International, Joe Freeman, said in a statement.“In a country where the military has banned many media outlets and internet access is restricted, we may not have a clear picture of the extent of damage and loss for some time,” he added. “That there appear to be more images and information coming out of Thailand than the epicenter in Myanmar is a startling reminder of the military’s crushing of press freedom since the 2021 coup.”Other countries affected by the earthquake include Bangladesh, India, Laos, and Communist China, where tremors were felt in the southwest Yunnan Province.

Chaos in Southeast Asia as 7.7 Magnitude Earthquake Devastates Region

Chaos in Southeast Asia as 7.7 Magnitude Earthquake Devastates Region

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