Earthquake in Asia: Child and two women rescued after 60 hours

By Carola Frentzen

Mandalay/Bangkok - Three days after the severe earthquake in Southeast Asia, rescue and search operations are continuing in both countries. Around 60 hours after the natural disaster, rescue workers have now rescued three people trapped in the rubble in Myanmar, including a five-year-old child.

In addition, a pregnant woman and a 29-year-old woman who were buried under the collapsed Sky Villa Condo high-rise building in the city of Mandalay were rescued alive by Chinese emergency services, the Myanmar Now news agency reported, citing the Chinese embassy in Myanmar.

The situation is particularly confusing in the crisis-hit country of Myanmar, where a brutal military junta rules and the flow of information is difficult. In the morning, there were initially no new figures on deaths and missing persons on state television.

Most recently, the military government had spoken of 1700 dead, around 3400 injured and 300 missing. Friday's quake, whose epicenter was near the second largest city of Mandalay in the center of former Burma, had a magnitude of 7.7.

The aid organization Save the Children reported that many families had sought refuge in monasteries and on soccer pitches for fear of aftershocks. Meanwhile, numerous damaged roads and interrupted communication lines hampered relief efforts.

At the same time, the junta, which had seized power at the beginning of 2021, had banned international media from accessing the disaster area, wrote the news agency Mynamar Now, citing General Zaw Min Htun.

Local media reported that in the particularly hard-hit Sagaing region, residents were searching for missing people themselves because rescue workers were unable to reach them. According to the news service Mizzima News, many people are still trapped in collapsed monasteries. At the same time, there is a bad smell of corpses in the air in the area.

In Bangkok, meanwhile, rescue teams are still feverishly searching for almost 80 missing people in a collapsed building shell. The teams are using excavators and sniffer dogs . Relatives waited desperately in front of the mountain of rubble that is still left of the 30-storey tower block. The 72 hours that trapped people can normally survive without food and water will soon be reached.

According to the city authorities, another body was recently recovered from the rubble . This brings the total death toll in the Thai capital to 18.

A severe earthquake was also reported near the island state of Tonga in the South Pacific. The US earthquake observatory USGS gave the magnitude of the earth tremors early Monday morning (local time) as 7.0. The center was located 73 kilometers from the city of Pangai at a depth of 29 kilometers. There were initially no reports of damage or casualties.

Radio New Zealand reported that it was the strongest quake in Tonga for ten years. There were also several strong aftershocks. However, an original tsunami warning was lifted.