In a country overwhelmed with misery right now, moments like this are rare.
A woman in her 30s is dragged from the rubble close to the epicentre in central Myanmar, where the cruelty of this disaster is everywhere. Young men call into a high school, hoping a miracle will call back — but there’s no reply.
Natt describes what she’s seeing:
“Obviously to see this, and that there are some other buildings that are also like this, is just hideous. This was an apartment building.”
In Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, there are sadly more bodies than survivors. But people keep digging — often by hand. Satellite images show street after street, suburb after suburb in ruins. It doesn’t seem like there’s a building that isn’t affected in some way. And for people already traumatised by years of civil war and military rule, this is another crushing blow.
The grief stretches across borders. In Thailand, families wait and pray, with dozens of loved ones still trapped inside a collapsed building. It’s been three days. One man is waiting for his brother and his brother’s wife — he says the first day he had hope, but now not so much. Another woman, Masu, is pregnant and her partner is missing.
The building was 34 storeys and still under construction. In places, the concrete was still wet. One woman says her boyfriend was working on the 28th floor. His phone was ringing yesterday, but now it doesn’t connect.
Natt and her dog Simba are caught up in the shock as well. She shares the latest she’s heard from the rescue effort:
“The news I got from them was that they didn’t find anybody other than deceased.”
Search and rescue continues into a third day, and it isn’t slowing down. Specialist cameras are still showing signs of life inside the twisted mess of concrete and metal — rescuers use cameras to see bodies in the debris. More help is arriving in Myanmar, with rescuers from China and Russia and aid from India. Australia has pledged $2 million to help, but the region will need much more than that.
Back in Bangkok, the painstaking search at the collapsed building site continues. Heavy machinery is being used to move mountains of rubble, but with the possibility that people are still trapped alive inside, it’s a delicate operation. Someone was found not long ago, but it wasn’t good news — and dozens of families remain on site, waiting through another night for any word about their loved ones.