Without heavy machinery to assist them and with authorities absent, a resident and rescue workers in Myanmar’s second-largest city said they were struggling to pull out survivors crying out for help.
Htet Min Oo, 25, barely survived when a brick wall collapsed on him, trapping half of his body. He said his grandmother and two uncles remained under the debris of a building, which he tried in vain to clear with his hands.
“There’s too much rubble, and no rescue teams have come for us,” he said, breaking into tears.
Humanitarian agencies say Friday’s quake, which measured 7.7 magnitude on the Richter scale, has killed more than 1,000 people. An aftershock measuring 5.1-magnitude struck at about 2.50pm, with tremors felt across Laos, Thailand, and parts of China.
The US geological survey said the region had already experienced at least 12 aftershocks since the initial major earthquake near Sagaing, with magnitudes ranging between 2.8 and 7.5.
Myanmar’s junta has issued a rare appeal for international aid, and disaster response teams from Russia, China, Singapore and India flying in on Saturday.
But rights activists raised fears that aid would not reach people on the ground, as the regime has a history of blocking relief to parts of the country controlled by opposition groups.
In Mandalay, residents interviewed said they had not yet received any assistance from military authorities. One rescue worker said on Saturday they had borrowed machinery from businesses to help sift through the rubble.
He said they had received nothing from the military government but declined to elaborate for fear of retribution.
Some residents were appealing for machinery on Facebook. One wrote that members of their family had been crushed under the rubble of a mosque and “we desperately want to recover their bodies”.
“We need to rent a crane to remove the heavy concrete blocks. If anyone has information on where we can rent one, please contact us,” they wrote.
A rescue worker trying to free 140 monks from the ruins of a collapsed building in Amarapura, Mandalay, said “we cannot help because we do not have enough manpower and machines to remove the debris”.
Nonetheless, he said, “we will not stop working”.
The earthquake came at a vulnerable moment for the country, after four years of military rule and civil war that has crippled infrastructure and displaced millions.
“The powerful earthquake hit the country at the worst possible time,” Sheela Matthew, deputy country director for the World Food Programme, said in a statement. “Myanmar just can’t afford another disaster.”
People across the country are affected by “widespread violence”, and the health system has “been decimated by conflict, overwhelmed by outbreaks of cholera and other diseases”, said Mohammed Riyas, Myanmar director for the International Rescue Committee.
A spokesperson for Myanmar’s junta did not respond to requests for comment while the foreign minister of the parallel civilian government that oversees some pro-democracy forces, said it would deploy anti-junta troops to help with disaster efforts.
More than 3.5 million people have been internally displaced and many more driven across the borders amid fighting between the military and a mosaic of armed groups that have seized control of vast swathes of territory.
Nyi Nyi Kyaw, a Myanmar academic at Bristol University, wrote in a social media post that the loss of a “significant portion of (the country’s) youth, particularly young men, due to forced conscription” into the military would hinder the disaster response.
“Cities and towns stand deserted by young men who would have once taken to the streets and mobilised for rescue and relief efforts,” he said. There is “no properly functioning – let alone legitimate – government in the regions most severely affected by the earthquake”, he said. - FMT
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