A powerful natural disaster with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 shook central Myanmar on Wednesday, knocking glasses off tables and sending people running out of buildings in the country’s largest city.
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Damage to the Buddhist temples – which are a major tourist attraction, and rival those in Cambodia’s Angkor Wat – appeared to be significant.
Bagan is home to more than 2,000 ancient Buddhist structures, including temples and pagodas dating back to 10th through the 14th centuries. Many are in disrepair while others have been restored in recent years, aided by the United Nations cultural agency Unesco.
Myanmar soldiers clean the pieces of bricks from a damaged pagoda after the eartquake at Bagan in Mandalay region, Myanmar, Aug. 25, 2016. “I hope nothing like that happens again”, said Aung Naing Win, 32, a craft maker from Bagan.
“My office is shaking”, an unidentified person who works on the 22nd floor of an office building told the Bangkok Post.
Myanmar President Htin Kyaw arrived in Bagan on Thursday to assess the damage and speak with local officials about how to fix it.
“It’s really heartbreaking; I can not even eat”, said Tin Hla Oo, a trustee of the three-story Htilominlo Temple, which was badly damaged by the quake.
Dr. Myo Thant, general secretary of the Myanmar Earthquake Committee, said other areas apparently were not badly affected. He said some sites would be covered, and urged local government officials to be judicious in restricting tourist access to damaged sites. The last major quake to seriously damage Bagan struck in 1975 and was followed by a controversial restoration effort under the military junta that stepped down in 2011. “Many people were scared and they ran out of the buildings”, local official Maung Maung Kyaw said. There were no immediate reports of damage in either country.
Vincent Panzani, a staff member in Pakokku for the aid agency Save the Children, said several of his colleagues from the area described the quake as the strongest they have experienced.
Two young girls and a man died in Magway region where the 6.8 magnitude quake struck Wednesday evening, cracking buildings across the centre of the country and sending tremors that were felt as far away as Bangkok and Kolkata.
“Though the estimate of damage has not been done, this is strong magnitude quake that causes great damage to life and property”, an official said. He said they reported moderate damage in the area, including tilting pagodas and buildings with large cracks.
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The 6.8 magnitude quake shook buildings across the Southeast Asia nation.
