At least 12 feared dead after strong earthquake strikes Burma

YANGON, Burma – 11.11.12 — A strong earth­quake of magnitude-6.8 struck north­ern Burma on Sun­day, col­laps­ing a bridge and a gold mine, dam­ag­ing sev­eral old Bud­dhist pago­das and leav­ing as many as 12 peo­ple feared dead.

The U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Soci­ety reported a 5.8-magnitude after­shock later Sun­day, but there were no ini­tial reports of new dam­age or casualties.

A slow release of offi­cial infor­ma­tion left the actual extent of the dam­age unclear after Sun­day morning’s strong quake. Burma has a poor offi­cial dis­as­ter response sys­tem, despite hav­ing lost upwards of 140,000 peo­ple to a dev­as­tat­ing cyclone in 2008.

Burma’s second-biggest city of Man­dalay reported no casu­al­ties or major dam­age as the near­est major pop­u­la­tion cen­ter to the main quake Man­dalay lies about 72 miles south of the quake’s epi­cen­ter near the town of Shwebo.

Smaller towns closer to the quake’s epi­cen­ter were worse-hit. A report late Sun­day on state tele­vi­sion MRTV said 100 homes, some gov­ern­ment build­ings and a pri­mary school were dam­aged in the Thabeikyin, a town known for gold min­ing not far from the epi­cen­ter. It put the lat­est casu­alty toll from the quake at four dead, 53 injured and four miss­ing, a death toll lower than inde­pen­dently com­piled tal­lies of around a dozen.

An offi­cial from Burma’s Mete­o­ro­log­i­cal Depart­ment said the magnitude-6.8 quake struck at 7:42 a.m. local time.

The area sur­round­ing the epi­cen­ter is under­de­vel­oped, and casu­alty reports were com­ing in piece­meal, mostly from local media. The region is a cen­ter for min­ing of min­er­als and gem­stones, and sev­eral mines were reported to have collapsed.

The biggest sin­gle death toll was reported by a local admin­is­tra­tive offi­cer in Sin­tku town­ship — on the Irrawaddy River near the quake’s epi­cen­ter — who told The Asso­ci­ated Press that six peo­ple had died there and another 11 were injured.

He said some of the dead were min­ers who were killed when a gold mine col­lapsed. He spoke on con­di­tion of anonymity because local offi­cials are nor­mally not allowed to release infor­ma­tion to the media.

Rumors cir­cu­lated in Yan­gon of other mine col­lapses trap­ping work­ers, but none of the reports could be confirmed.

Accord­ing to news reports, sev­eral peo­ple died when a bridge under con­struc­tion across the Irrawaddy River col­lapsed east of Shwebo. The bridge linked the town of Sin­tku, 40 miles north of Man­dalay on the east bank of the Irrawaddy, with Kyauk­myaung on the west bank.

The web­site of Weekly Eleven mag­a­zine said four peo­ple were killed and 25 injured when the bridge, which was 80 per­cent fin­ished, fell. The local gov­ern­ment announced a toll of two dead and 16 injured. All of the vic­tims appeared to be workers.

How­ever, a Shwebo police offi­cer, also speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity, said just one per­son was con­firmed dead from the bridge’s col­lapse, while five were still unac­counted for.

Weekly Eleven also said two monas­ter­ies in Kyauk­myaung col­lapsed, killing two people.

“This is the worst earth­quake I felt in my entire life,” Soe Soe, a 52-year-old Shwebo res­i­dent, told The Asso­ci­ated Press by phone.

She said that the huge con­crete gate of a local monastery col­lapsed and that sev­eral sculp­tures from another pagoda in the town were damaged.

Other dam­age was reported in Mogok, a major gem-mining area just east of the quake’s epi­cen­ter. Tem­ples were dam­aged there, as were some aban­doned mines.

“Land­slides occurred at some old ruby mines, but there were no casu­al­ties because these are old mines,” Sein Win, a Mogok res­i­dent, said by phone.

State tele­vi­sion reported that more than a dozen pago­das and stu­pas in five town­ships were dam­aged, and many of them had their so-called “umbrel­las” atop the dome-shaped struc­tures crash down.

The upper­most parts of the domes usu­ally con­tain encased relics of the Bud­dha and small Bud­dha images, and some­times jew­els. Dam­age to them is taken as an espe­cially bad omen.

Sein Win said police were guard­ing a dam­aged stupa in Mogok and its exposed relics.

Many peo­ple in Burma are super­sti­tious, and it is likely that local sooth­say­ers will point out that the quake occurred on the 11th day of the 11th month.

A res­i­dent of Naypy­itaw, which is 225 miles south of the quake’s epi­cen­ter, said sev­eral win­dow­panes of the par­lia­ment build­ing had broken.

The epi­cen­ter is in a region fre­quently hit by small tem­blors that usu­ally cause lit­tle damage.

The quake was felt in Bangkok, the cap­i­tal of neigh­bor­ing Thai­land. It comes just a week ahead of a sched­uled visit to Burma by Pres­i­dent Barack Obama. He will be the first U.S. pres­i­dent to visit the one-time pariah nation, which is emerg­ing from decades of mil­i­tary rule.

The dis­as­ter is the sec­ond to strike the area in three days. On Fri­day, a tanker train derailed about 80 miles north of Shwebo, and at least 25 peo­ple were killed when over­turned car­riages burst into flames as they were try­ing to skim fuel from them.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Nov 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.