BBC has been verifying videos of the earthquake and damage, some of which have been posted on social media:
The footage of the Bangkok building under construction collapsing is terrifying. Rescuers are arriving at the scene per BBC, and apparently there are some people still alive under the rubble. Ten meters (ca. 30 feet) deep. Horrible.
I am distraught for the people of Myanmar and Thailand who have suffered as a result of the earthquake. The scenes are absolutely horrible. Temples lying on their sides, slanted buildings, kids in sneakers trying to dig people out of the rubble. It was an enormous earthquake, 7.7. That is just huge, the most severe category.
If you can help, please make a donation. I just donated to Oxfam, which currently has a 5x matching scheme.
Real question here, but I am unclear of the impact of defunding a lot of the foreign aid the US gives. Have we sent anyone to help these people? And, given the state of their ongoing civil war, is anyone able to get into the country to help them? I realize there is a war going on, so I understand the difficulties.
A statement was made by our government that we would help. The mechanisms to do so according to my friend who worked for AID are no longer in place. Don’t want to get political, and am anxious to see how this plays out. Lindagaf, your idea of Oxfam as a less American charity is a good one. Another is International Rescue Committee, who have been involved in SE Asia for a very long time. Mercy Corps is another that has worked previously in Myanmar. Due to the civil war, the people of Myanmar have been hurting for a very long time.
The videos of the building under construction that collapsed in Bangkok are reminiscent of 9/11. Workers from Myanmar do a lot of the construction in Bangkok and I’m sure their folks were impacted in an outsized way. It is odd however, as nothing else collapsed in BKK, other construction projects included, though there may be a great deal of structural damage to be discovered. Bangkok is not considered to be especially seismically active, though Myanmar, sitting at the juncture of several tectonic places, certainly is.
I went on what was at that time a standard 7 day tour of Burma, the old name for the country, in the early 1980s. It has been isolated from the modern world for decades and felt a little like time travel. People were sweet and the pagodas astounding.
For whatever reason, I was awake in the middle of that night post earthquake and finally gathered myself together to call my elderly family member in Bangkok. She was fine, said she was eating lunch when she thought she had become dizzy. The dining room light fixture was swaying and she realized the building was moving. Nothing fell. Two building employees, who keep an eye on her, pounded on the front door and got her down to the courtyard, where she sat for several hours in the shade before returning to her flat. Relieved and grateful here, that the employees took care of her. Things could have been far worse, for her as well as many others.
The situation in Myanmar is horrific and so sad.
Myanmar earthquake: What caused it and why did it make a building in Bangkok collapse? has some information about why the earthquake produced a lot of shaking 1,000 km away in Bangkok, and that “Prior to 2009, Bangkok did not have a comprehensive safety standard for constructing buildings to withstand earthquakes, according to Dr Christian Málaga-Chuquitaype, a senior lecturer in earthquake engineering at Imperial College London.”
The geology is fascinating. Thanks for the article.
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