Anxious residents of Yangon, the country’s main city, rushed out of tall buildings, and objects toppled from tables and from Buddhist shrines in homes. The quake, which the agency said struck at a depth of 84 kilometres, swayed high-rise buildings in the Thai capital of Bangkok, AFP journalists reported.
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Both the Myanmar Ministry of Religious and Cultural Affairs and the Myanmar Earthquake Committee made the announcement before revealing that may have been the extent of the more serious damage the earthquake caused.
Visitors have been denied access to the damaged Bagan archaeological site with security measures being imposed on the area.
U Kyaw Lwin, a senior official from Rakhine State’s Department of Relief and Resettlement, said three pagodas in Mrauk-U – another site on the tourist trail – were damaged along with one school building and some residences in the state. “Most of the reports of damage have been to the pagodas in the area with dozens impacted”.
Authorities in Myanmar have sent police and the military to protect and rebuild centuries-old Buddist pagodas around the ancient capital Bagan.
The quake shook buildings in Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon, and in other towns and cities, witnesses said.
“We felt quite heavy shaking for about 10 seconds and started to evacuate the building when there was another strong tremor”, said Vincent Panzani of the Save the Children charity located in the village of Pakkoku, some 25 km from Bagan. There were no immediate reports of casualties in Myanmar, but officials said they were checking early reports of damage to several pagodas in the Buddhist-majority country.
“There is no report of major damage in Tripura, Mizoram, Assam and adjoining areas of the northeast yet”. “It takes time to know how the structures are stabilised and how bad the actual damage is – if a roof collapses, how much it affects different walls and mural paintings”. Tremors were felt as far away as Bangladesh, India, Thailand, Laos, and China.
The 6.8 magnitude quake shook buildings across the Southeast Asia nation.
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The Department of Mineral Resources under the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has been monitoring the Arakan fault line in Rakhine State of Myanmar, reporting no aftershocks following the 6.8 magnitude quake in Myanmar on August 24th.
