A powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake has struck Southeast Asia, killing over 1,000 people near the epicenter in Myanmar, and injuring more than 2,000.
When and where did the earthquake occur?
According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the earthquake hit around 12:50 p.m. local time (1:50 a.m. ET) on Friday, approximately 10 miles northwest of the town of Sagaing, near Myanmar's second-largest city of Mandalay. A 6.4-magnitude aftershock followed about 12 minutes later.
How extensive is the destruction?
The USGS reports that the earthquake occurred at a shallow depth of 6 miles, resulting in severe shaking and substantial damage in a roughly 125-mile-long, 10-mile-wide corridor stretching north and south through Mandalay.
State-run television announced on Saturday that over 1,000 had been killed and more than 2,000 injured, according to a statement from the military-led government.
Social media posts from Myanmar show people seeking shelter on the tarmac of what appears to be Mandalay airport, with debris scattered throughout the terminal. Additional footage shows collapsed buildings and wreckage in the streets.
NPR has not yet verified the authenticity of these reports.
Myanmar's government has declared a state of emergency in six regions and states, including Mandalay and the capital Naypyidaw, according to the Associated Press. The Red Cross is struggling to reach the hardest-hit areas due to downed power lines. A local rescue team near Naypyidaw told NPR that scores of people were killed in the region.
In the past, Myanmar's government has been slow to accept outside aide, but Min Aung Hlaing said the country was ready to accept assistance. The government said blood was in high demand in the areas closest to the epicenter.
In Thailand, dramatic scenes unfolded in Bangkok, where a 33-story tower collapsed near a major tourist market.
Videos on social media showed the building crumbling inward, creating a massive dust cloud as people nearby scrambled to escape.
Bangkok city authorities said 10 people were killed, 16 injured and 101 missing from three separate construction sites across the city, including the high-rise that collapsed, according to the AP.
According to The Bangkok Post. The building, being constructed to house Thailand's Office of the Auditor General, was about one-third complete, with workers from both Thailand and abroad on-site but had reached its full height.
As the temblor shook Bangkok, people across the capital fled high-rise buildings. Sirichok Saelee, 28, who works in a bank office on the 21st floor of the PS Tower in the city's center, described the moment the quake hit: "At first, I didn't know what was going on. I felt dizzy, like I wanted to throw up. Then the building started shaking hard, and I could see the glass windows moving. That's when my colleagues and I looked at each other and realized it was an earthquake. We started running for the stairs."
Is the area prone to earthquakes?
Yes. "This region is right on the boundary between the Indian plate and the Eurasian plate," says Maureen Long, a professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Yale University.
"It's certainly a place where we expect, tragically, earthquakes of this magnitude," she says.
What comes next?
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said the world body was mobilizing to respond to the crisis.
"The government of Myanmar has asked for international support and our team in Myanmar is already in contact in order to fully mobilize our resources in the region to support the people of Myanmar," he said.
The U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator, Tom Fletcher, announced an initial $5 million to assist Myanmar. The U.N. noted that the earthquake "compounds an already dire humanitarian situation in Myanmar, where nearly 20 million people need assistance across the country, including more than 3.5 million people displaced from their homes."
Chris Eades, the regional Asia representative for Church World Service, an international humanitarian development assistance organization headquartered in the U.S., says Myanmar's ongoing civil war makes rescue and recovery difficult.
"The infrastructure just isn't able to deal with something like this," Eades tells NPR from Bangkok.
"Even before the earthquake happened, things were incredibly difficult," he says. "There are enforced Internet blackouts in the minority ethnic areas ... So getting any information into and out of those areas or getting [them help] quickly and effectively is very difficult to do."
Eades notes that Myanmar has a history of "[restricting] the operations of NGOs and the U.N., who are most capable of providing assistance and still continues to restrict their movement, their communications and their funding."
"And, of course, with the recent developments in the United States, many of those organizations have stripped out their staff because of cuts to USAID," Eades said.
Michael Sullivan contributed reporting from Chiang Rai, Thailand, and Wai Moe from Chiang Mai, Thailand.
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