“There were foreign tourists there as well”, said Khin Maung Toe, a Myanmar man who was visiting Bagan for the first time when the quake struck.
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Using brooms and their hands, soldiers and residents of an ancient Myanmar city famous for its historic Buddhist pagodas began cleaning up the debris Thursday from a powerful quake that shook the region and damaged almost 200 temples.
Zaw Htay, a government spokesman, said Myanmar’s de facto leader and veteran democracy activist Aung Sang Suu Kyi has urged authorities “not to rush” in renovating the damaged temples. The natural disaster, measuring 6.7 on the Richter Scale, originated 25 km west of Chauk township in Myanmar.
The powerful quake was also felt in neighboring Bangladesh and several Indian states including West Bengal, Bihar and Assam, with thousands of panic-stricken people rushed outdoors following the jolts that lasted for seconds.
Amanda George from the International Red Cross in Myanmar said that while the organization continued to provide help and assistance in search and rescue operations, it was not treating it as a major emergency situation.
Soldiers collect the debris at famed Htilominlo Temple in Bagan. Police officers cordoned off most the damaged ancient pagodas.
He spoke from Pakkoku, a small town about 25 km (15 miles) northeast of Bagan, the centrepiece of Myanmar’s rapidly expanding tourism industry. Bagan is among Southeast Asia’s important archaeological sites, and they are often compared to Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and Indonesia’s Borobudur.
“I am very sad because our ancient pagodas are damaged and some have collapsed now”.
Myanmar, which was named the world’s best tourist destination in 2014, is in a seismically active part of the world, where the Indo-Australian Plate runs up against the Eurasian Plate.
“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.
The Bangkok Post reported an official from Bagan’s cultural department as saying that “about 60 pagodas” were damaged, some of them seriously.
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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.
