In Myanmar, tragedy follows tragedy

When the earthquake struck on Friday, I was at lunch in Bangkok with a group of journalists. The tables and chairs started shaking and the more senior among us at first thought we were having a bad dizzy spell.

Many customers left the restaurant but it occupies a solid, low-rise building and we decided to stay inside, watching videos of roof-top infinity pools pitching water down the sides of high-rise towers and the collapse of a building under construction over near the Chatuchak weekend market.

Outside, the footpaths and front steps of office buildings were crammed with workers ordered to leave their desks but with nowhere to go. The Skytrain (BTS) and subway (MRT) trains had stopped running and traffic was gridlocked. There were no vacant taxis and the ride-share apps declared, over and over again as I checked, that no drivers were available.

I decided to walk home, along Sukhumvit Road, the main road heading east. If the trains started running again, I would see them. I joined a shoulder-to-shoulder, jostling mass of people walking in the same direction, passing long queues at bus stops and unbroken crowds of people sitting or standing around, not even hoping for a bus. When I reached home, five BTS stations from the restaurant, I was still part of a steady stream of people. Many of them kept on walking. It we had waited for the train, we would have been waiting until the next morning.

My fitness app told me I had covered more than 7km. The temperature was 35 or 36c. Not bad for an old fellow who has to use a cane, I thought, as I poured a beer, following the Thai practice of adding ice to make sure it stays cold.

My self-congratulatory mood began to wane when a Chinese friend in Hong Kong texted me asking if I was safe and saying she was concerned about the families of the construction workers. I checked the news: eight workers had died in the building collapse and more than 70 were missing. (The toll is now 10).

The mood was erased the next morning when the BBC reported the death toll in Myanmar had reached 1600; the New York Times cited a US Geological Survey estimate that it could be as high as 10,000.

The earthquake’s epicentre was near Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-biggest city. It was 10km deep which, it seems, is shallow – increasing the destruction on the surface. The quake measured 7.7 on the Richter Scale (the strongest to hit Myanmar in more than a century) and was followed by a 6.4 aftershock.

Myanmar’s isolated military junta asked for international aid – a rare request, noted ucanews.com. The regime declared a state-of-emergency over six worst-affected regions. Buildings, roads and bridges have been wrecked. Rescue workers, with no with protective gear and using their bare hands, struggled to free survivors from countless ruined buildings.

In Naypyidaw, the capital, hundreds of casualties were taken a major hospital. They were treated outside because of damage to the building. 

But this is Myanmar, poor, poor Myanmar. Junta forces launched airstrikes in several regions of the country after the earthquake had struck, The Irrawaddy newssite said. Presumably the military stopped the bombing when junta chief General Min Aung Hlaing visited Mandalay on Saturday.

They are still counting the toll of death, injury and destruction from the earthquake and will be counting for weeks. That number will come on top of the death toll from the civil war that has plagued Myanmar since the junta seized power four years ago – more than 70,000 have been killed.

This is Myanmar: tragedy after tragedy.

David Armstrong is a Bangkok-based former editor and media executive.

This article first appeared in Pearls and Irritations.