A powerful earthquake rattled Myanmar and neighbouring Thailand on Friday, trapping dozens of workers in a collapsed under-construction skyscraper in Bangkok where a state of emergency was declared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 7.7-magnitude tremor hit northwest of the city of Sagaing on Friday afternoon at a shallow depth, the United States Geological Survey said. A 6.4-magnitude aftershock hit the same area minutes later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the Thai capital, a 30-storey building under construction collapsed, trapping 43 workers, police and medics said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The massive building intended for government offices was reduced to a tangle of rubble and twisted metal in seconds, footage shared on social media showed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen I arrived to inspect the site, I heard people calling for help, saying help me,\u201d Worapat Sukthai, deputy police chief of Bang Sue district, told AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe estimate that hundreds of people are injured but we are still determining the number of casualties,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Across the border in Myanmar, a team of AFP<\/em> journalists were at the National Museum in Naypyidaw when the earthquake struck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pieces fell from the ceiling as the building began shaking. Uniformed staff ran outside, some trembling and tearful, others grabbing cellphones to try to contact loved ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roads nearby were buckled and broken by the tremors and the route to one of the city\u2019s biggest hospitals was jammed with traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The hospital was a \u201cmass casualty area\u201d after the quake, officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n An ambulance made its way between vehicles, a paramedic shouting \u201ccars, move aside so the ambulance can get through\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the 1,000-bed hospital, the wounded were being treated in the street outside, intravenous drips hanging from their gurneys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some writhed in pain, others lay still as relatives sought to comfort them. The tremors send people into the streets across both countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI heard it and I was sleeping in the house, I ran as far as I could in my pyjamas out of the building,\u201d Duangjai, a resident of the popular northern Thailand tourist city Chiang Mai, told AFP<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sai, a 76-year-old Chiang Mai resident, was working at a minimart when the shop started the shake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI quickly rushed out of the shop along with other customers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is the strongest tremor I\u2019ve experienced in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The quake forced the suspension of some metro and light rail services in Bangkok, where Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra declared a state of emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier she said she had interrupted an official visit to the southern island of Phuket to hold an \u201curgent meeting\u201d after the quake, according to a post on X. Tremors were also felt in China\u2019s southwest Yunnan province, according to Beijing\u2019s quake agency, which said the jolt measured 7.9 in magnitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earthquakes are relatively common in Myanmar, where six strong quakes of 7.0 magnitude or more struck between 1930 and 1956 near the Sagaing Fault, which runs north to south through the centre of the country, according to the USGS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake in the ancient capital Bagan in central Myanmar killed three people in 2016, also toppling spires and crumbling temple walls at the tourist destination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The breakneck pace of development in Myanmar\u2019s cities, combined with crumbling infrastructure and poor urban planning, has also made the country\u2019s most populous areas vulnerable to earthquakes and other disasters, experts say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The impoverished Southeast Asian nation has a strained medical system, especially in its rural states.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A powerful earthquake rattled Myanmar and neighbouring Thailand on Friday, trapping dozens of workers in a collapsed under-construction skyscraper in Bangkok where a state of emergency was declared. The 7.7-magnitude tremor hit northwest of the city of Sagaing on Friday afternoon at a shallow depth, the United States Geological Survey said. A 6.4-magnitude aftershock hit […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":9739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,396],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-latest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Buildings damaged<\/h2>\n\n\n\n