Myanmar: Smell of death permeates cities after quake kills over 1600, this as tremor also buries countless of people.
The smell of decaying bodies permeated the streets of Myanmar’s second-largest city on Sunday as people worked frantically by hand to clear rubble in the hope of finding someone still alive, two days after a massive earthquake struck that killed more than 1,600 people and left countless others buried.
The 7.7 magnitude quake hit midday Friday with an epicenter near Mandalay, bringing down scores of buildings and damaging other infrastructure like the city’s airport.
Relief efforts have been hampered by buckled roads, downed bridges, spotty communications and the challenges of operating in a country in the midst of a civil war.
The search for survivors has been primarily conducted by the local residents without the aid of heavy equipment, moving rubble by hand and with shovels in 41-degree Celsius (106 Fahrenheit) heat, with only the occasional tracked excavator to be seen.
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A 5.1 magnitude aftershock Sunday afternoon prompted screams from those in the streets, and then the work continued.
Many of Mandalay’s 1.5 million people spent the night sleeping on the streets, either left homeless by the quake, which also shook neighboring Thailand and killed at least 18 people there, or worried that the continuing aftershocks might cause structures left unstable to collapse.
So far 1,644 people have been reported killed in Myanmar and 3,408 injured, but many areas have not yet been reached, and many rescue efforts so far have been undertaken by people working by hand to try and clear rubble, said Cara Bragg, the Yangon-based manager of Catholic Relief Services in Myanmar.
“It’s mainly been local volunteers, local people who are just trying to find their loved ones,” Bragg said after bring briefed by her colleague in Mandalay.
“I’ve also seen reports that now some countries are sending search and rescue teams up to Mandalay to support the efforts, but hospitals are really struggling to cope with the influx of injured people, there’s a shortage of medical supplies, and people are struggling to find food and clean water,” Bragg added.
The organization was sending a team by road on Sunday to assess peoples’ most pressing needs so that it could target its own response.
With the Mandalay airport damaged and the control tower toppled in the capital Naypitaw’s airport, all commercial flights into the cities have been shut down.
