BANGKOK/CHIANG MAI, Thailand — A 7.7-magnitude earthquake centered northwest of Mandalay, Myanmar, left 144 people dead and 732 injured in the war-ravaged country, and caused at least 10 deaths and damage in the Thai capital more than 1,000 kilometers away.
The earthquake, which was 10 kilometers deep, struck at 12:50 p.m. local time or 1:20 p.m. in Thailand, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, 17 kilometers north of Myanmar’s second largest city. The USGS reported a 6.4-magnitude aftershock 12 minutes after the initial tremor.
Myanmar’s military regime leader. Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, said 144 people had been killed and 732 injured but that these figures were expected to rise. Most of the dead were in the capital Naypyitaw, with others in Sagaing and Kyaukse — near Mandalay.
He issued a rare appeal for international aid and called for people to donate blood at hospitals in the affected areas, notably Sagaing, Mandalay and Naypyitaw.
“I declared a state of emergency in all affected areas and opened a path for international support,” he said on the evening TV news. “I recently agreed and accepted an offer from the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance and India to send aid tomorrow. I call on any countries, any organization and the public in Myanmar to support us.”
Marie Manrique, Program Coordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross, said to reporters in Geneva, via video link from Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city: “Public infrastructure has been damaged, including roads, bridges and public buildings. We currently have concerns for large-scale dams that people are watching to see the conditions of.”
Local media showed Min Aung Hlaing inspecting areas affected by the earthquake in Naypyitaw.
Myanmar has been wracked by civil war since the generals seized power in February 2021. Previous military regimes have been reluctant to accept international aid after natural disasters, such as following Cyclone Nargis in 2008.
One woman in Mandalay, which has a population of 1.5 million, who did not want to give her name, said: “Many buildings have collapsed, and I’m unable to contact my family in Sagaing. The phone lines are also out of service.”
A man in the city added that several buildings around the palace had been destroyed and a colonial-era bridge connecting Mandalay with neighboring Sagaing collapsed into a river.
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A resident of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, said he was unable to reach his family in Mandalay. “I’m worrying so much for my family. My parents are living in a very old building in Mandalay.”
The opposition National Unity Government issued a statement pledging to stand with the public throughout the recovery and rebuilding process. It added that it was compiling reports on casualties and damage while conducting search and rescue operations, relocation efforts, and reconstruction activities.
It also urged the international community to provide humanitarian aid and effective “coordination to ensure that aid reaches those genuinely in need.”
In Bangkok, a partially built 30-floor State Audit Office building in the Chatuchak district collapsed, leaving at least five people dead. Videos posted online showed construction workers fleeing the site. Some 600 rescuers worked into the night to try to free around 90 trapped people. At least 12 had been rescued four hours later.
The collapsed building was near Chatuchak Market, a large outdoor bazaar popular among foreign tourists.
By midnight, 10 were dead, 16 injured and 10 missing across three construction sites in Bangkok. The death toll included the operator of a crane that fell over in the Din Daeng district.
Skyscrapers elsewhere in the Thai capital swayed as workers, residents and tourists evacuated office buildings, hotels, condominiums and embassies. water from rooftop swimming pools on high rise buildings cascaded down to the ground.
The Stock Exchange of Thailand suspended all trading activities at 2 p.m. All stations of the Bangkok Mass Transit System (BTS) Skytrain and the underground Metropolitan Rapid Transit system were closed.
Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, speaking from the southern city of Phuket, declared Bangkok an emergency zone. She later said all the city’s public parks would remain open all night for people to take shelter. The Bangkok government distributed food and water and deployed mobile toilets.
As the night set in, stranded people — most already inured to lengthy commutes — took shelter in cool lobbies and ground floor cafes and restaurants. Others sat along pavements and in ground floor restaurants, at bus stops with no buses in sight and in occasional green areas. Many motorcycles carried three people. An exhausted taxi driver told of a nearly five-hour journey that covered less than two kilometers.
Major tech suppliers and automotive manufacturers said they had suffered little disruption from the quake. Delta Electronics said its production line suspended operations for an hour and then resumed manufacturing. KINPO, Quanta and Lite all reported their lines were not affected.
Nissan Motor stopped production to evacuate employees at its plant east of Bangkok. Honda’s production plant in Ayutthaya, north of Bangkok, resumed production after stopping temporarily. Toyota’s Gateway plant continued to operate as usual. Bangkok’s airports were unaffected.
No deaths or injuries were reported in the northern Thai provinces of Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai even though they were much closer to the epicenter.
The quake was also felt in southwest China and Vietnam.
