Myanmar and Thailand earthquake live: More than 140 dead in Myanmar as 117 trapped under Bangkok skyscraper

According to Myanmar’s English-language state newspaper, Global New Light of Myanmar, five cities and towns have seen buildings collapse and two bridges have fallen, including one on a key highway between Mandalay.

The Associated Press has cited Christian Aid as saying that its partners and colleagues on the ground reported that a dam burst in Mandalay, causing water levels to rise in the lowland areas.

The UN’s emergency relief coordinator has made an initial allocation of $5m for recovery efforts in southeast Asia as the international body works to recover from massive US funding cuts to the region.

International and local UN staff are working to gather information on the number of people impacted, damage to infrastructure and the scope of the humanitarian needs, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters.

“The earthquake will compound 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,” Mr Dujarric was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

In the below report, my colleague Alisha Rahaman Sarkar maps out the areas affected by the earthquake:

A rescue worker from Amarapura, an ancient city and now a township of Mandalay, has told Reuters that the bodies of 30 people had been recovered from collapsed multi-story apartment blocks.

“I have never experienced anything like this before – our town looks like a collapsed city,” he told the news agency, estimating that about a fifth of the buildings had been destroyed.

“We received calls for help from people from the inside, but we cannot help because we do not have enough manpower and machines to remove the debris, but we will not stop working.”

The US Geological Survey’s (USGS) earthquake hazards programme has suggested that fatalities could be between 10,000 and 100,000 people, and the economic impact could be as high as 70 per cent of Myanmar’s GDP.

According to Dr Roger Musson, an honorary research fellow at the British Geological Survey, such forecasts are based on data from past earthquakes and on Myanmar’s size, location and overall quake readiness.

Speaking to Reuters, Dr Musson said that the shallow depth of the quake – at just 6.2 miles, according to the USGS – meant the damage would be more severe: “This is very damaging because it has occurred at a shallow depth, so the shockwaves are not dissipated as they go from the focus of the earthquake up to the surface. The buildings received the full force of the shaking.”

He added: “It’s important not to be focused on epicentres because the seismic waves don’t radiate out from the epicentre – they radiate out from the whole line of the fault.”

Noting that the last major quake to hit the region was in 1956, Dr Musson said that homes in central Myanmar are unlikely to have been built to withstand seismic forces as powerful as those that hit on Friday.

As darkness fell in Bangkok, rescue workers continued to search for survivors in the rubble of a collapsed building, where scores of people were still feared missing.

According to Chinese media reports, the earthquake was also felt in China’s Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, and caused damage and injuries in the city of Ruili – which sits on the border with Myanmar.

Footage reported to have been captured in Ruili showed building debris littering a street and a person being wheeled in a stretcher toward an ambulance.

The shaking in Mangshi, a Chinese city some 60 miles northeast of Ruili, was so strong that people couldn’t stand, one resident told The Paper, an online media outlet.