Posts on social media appeared to show damage to centuries-old pagodas in the popular tourist destination of Bagan, about 10 miles northeast of the natural disaster epicenter.
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A powerful magnitude 6.8 natural disaster shook central Myanmar on Wednesday, damaging scores of ancient Buddhist pagodas in the former capital of Bagan, a major tourist attraction, officials said.
The quake struck at a relatively deep 84 km (52 miles), the USGS said.
Yangon-based travel agent Amy Saw, who had been in touch with her firm’s Bagan office, said some of the pagodas there had been damaged, and the Ministry of Religious Affairs put the number sustaining some kind of damage at 65. Bagan, a major tourist attraction also known as Pagan, has hundreds of such structures.
Myo Thant, general-secretary of the Myanmar Earthquake Committee, said other areas apparently were not badly affected and that there were no reports of deaths in connection with the quake.
A fire department official from regional capital Magwe said two young girls were killed when a riverbank gave way in Yenanchaung township, south of Chauk.
United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was “saddened” by the loss of life and damage from the quake and expressed his condolences to the “people and government” of Myanmar.
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. It’s not far from the ancient city and tourist mecca of Bagan, where pictures suggest that centuries-old pagodas suffered some damage.
“We felt quite heavy shaking for about 10 seconds and started to evacuate the building when there was another strong tremor”, Reuters quoted Vincent Panzani of the Save the Children charity organization as saying from Pakkoku. It caused no reported casualties and only minor damage.
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The department of relief and resettlement has alerted the people in quake-hit areas to be aware of the follow-up small quakes. In 1897, a Shillong-epicentred quake measured 8.2 on the Richter scale, while in 1950, an natural disaster in Assam measuring 8.7 on the Richter Scale forced the mighty Brahmaputra river to change its course.
