Off The Record

A Massive Earthquake With A Magnitude Of 7.7 Struck Bangkok, Causing The Destruction Of An Apartment Block And The Evacuation Of Travelers From Hotels

Published on March 28, 2025

Thai and Myanmar were hit by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake that caused a state of emergency and fears of many deaths after shaking high-rise buildings and destroying apartment blocks.

The US Geological Survey and Germany’s GFZ center for geosciences both said the event happened at a depth of only 6.2 miles and had its epicenter in Myanmar, which is nearby.

One hour later, a second quake with a magnitude of 6.4 shook the area.

In Myanmar’s capital, Naypyitaw, the tremors were so strong that they broke buildings and cracked roads. A large hospital in the city called it a “mass casualty area.”

The center of the quake was about 17.2 km from Mandalay, which is home to about 1.5 million people, and 1,000 km from the greater Bangkok area, which is home to more than 17 million people, many of whom live in high-rise flats.

A shocking video shows the moment workers ran away as a building that was still being built fell from the shaking caused by the earthquake.

Bangkok police said they didn’t know how many people might have been hurt yet, but local media said that 43 workers were missing after the building collapsed.

When the earthquake hit around 1:30 p.m. local time, alarms went off in buildings. People in downtown Bangkok, which is very crowded, were quickly evacuated down the stairs of high-rise buildings and hotels.

In the minutes after the earthquake, they stayed out in the streets, looking for shade from the hot sun.

The shaking was strong enough to make water splash out of pools, some of which were high above the street in high-rises.

“All of a sudden, the whole building began to move. There was screaming and a lot of panic,” said Fraser Morton, a tourist from Scotland who was shopping for camera gear in one of Bangkok’s many malls.

“I just started walking calmly at first but then the building started really moving, yeah, a lot of screaming, a lot of panic, people running the wrong way down the escalators, lots of banging and crashing inside the mall.”

Morton, like a lot of other people in downtown Bangkok, went to Benjasiri Park to get away from all the big buildings.

“I got outside and then looked up at the building and the whole building was moving, dust and debris, it was pretty intense” he said. “Lots of chaos.”

Myanmar is in the middle of a civil war when the earthquake happened.

Videos and photos shared on Facebook show that the earthquake damaged parts of the old royal palace and other buildings in Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city and close to the epicenter.

Even though the area is prone to earthquakes, it is not very populated, and most of the homes are built on low-rise buildings.

A 90-year-old bridge fell in the Sagaing region, which is just southwest of Mandalay. Parts of the highway that connects Mandalay to Yangon, which is Myanmar’s biggest city, were also damaged.

The quake hurt some homes and church buildings in Naypyitaw, the capital. Parts of some buildings fell over.

The quake hurt people and buildings in Bangkok, and it had to stop some metro and light rail services in the city.

A post on X says that Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra said on Friday that she had to cut short an official trip to the southern island of Phuket to hold a “urgent meeting” after the earthquake.

Beijing’s quake agency said the jolt was 7.9 on the Richter scale and could be felt in China’s southwest Yunnan state as well.

Myanmar has a lot of earthquakes. Six big ones with magnitudes of 7.0 or higher happened between 1930 and 1956 near the Sagaing Fault, which runs through the middle of the country from north to south.

Three people were killed in 2016 by a strong 6.8-magnitude earthquake in Bagan, Myanmar’s ancient city. The earthquake also destroyed temple walls and knocked down spires.

Experts say that the fastest rate of growth in Myanmar’s cities, along with infrastructure that is falling apart and bad urban planning, has made the country’s most populated places more likely to be hit by earthquakes and other disasters.

The Southeast Asian country is very poor, and its health care system is overworked, especially in its rural areas.