Strong Earthquake Shakes Myanmar, Northern Thailand Skip to main content

Strong Earthquake Shakes Myanmar, Northern Thailand


BANGKOK (AP) — A strong earthquake shook northern Thailand and Myanmar on Monday evening, smashing windows, cracking walls and roads and damaging Buddhist temples. No casualties have been reported.

The airport in Chiang Rai, a northern Thai city near the epicenter of the 6.0-magnitude temblor, evacuated its terminal, where display signs and pieces of the ceiling fell.
No one was hurt and there was no damage to the runway or flight disruptions, airport General Manager Damrong Klongakara said. The terminal and its roof were still being checked for further damage.

A well-known temple in the city, Wat Rongkhun, was closed due to safety concerns after the earthquake.

"The spire of the main building came off and the tiles on the roof fell off," Chalermchai Kositpiphat, the artist who built the temple, told Nation TV. "I still don't know how we can sleep tonight. ... It was shaking the whole time and then aftershocks followed four to five times. It will bring more damages each time an aftershock happens, I'm afraid."
"The murals are also damaged because the pillars were shaken badly," Chalermchai said. "I don't know how many years it will take me to fix it. ... It was tumbling like the Earth was going to explode."

The head of a Buddha statue fell at the Udomwaree Temple in Chiang Rai, according to monk Phra Pathompong. A residential building at the temple also had exterior cracks and ceiling damage, and nearby residents reported only minor damage in their homes, he said.
Damages were being assessed in Chiang Rai's Phan district, where ceilings fell in some homes, said Wander Radchompoo, head of the district. A damaged road in the district had multiple cracks, the worst a waist-high gash about the length of three vehicles.

People ran down stairs in office buildings in Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, and severe shaking also was felt in Chiang Mai, Thailand's second-largest city. Window curtains briefly swayed in the Thai capital, Bangkok.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter was 9 kilometers (6 miles) south of Mae Lao, Thailand, and 27 kilometers (17 miles) southwest of Chiang Rai. Its depth was a relatively shallow 7.4 kilometers (4.6 miles). Shallow quakes are generally felt more widely.

Southeast Asia is seismically active and quakes are often felt in surrounding nations. Thailand has several fault lines, though in recent times quakes centered in the country have been less severe than those in other Southeast Asian nations such as Myanmar and Indonesia.

The 9.1-magnitude earthquake off Indonesia's Sumatra island on Dec. 26, 2004, which triggered an Indian Ocean tsunami, killed more than 8,000 people in Thailand's coastal areas, among the overall death toll of 240,000.

The last quake in Thailand approaching a similar size to Monday's was one of 5.1 magnitude on Dec. 13, 2006, in the northern province of Chiang Mai.
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/05/earthquake-thailand_n_5266130.html
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chronology of the Press in Burma

1836 – 1846 * During this period the first English-language newspaper was launched under British-ruled Tenasserim, southern  Burma . The first ethnic Karen-language and Burmese-language newspapers also appear in this period.     March 3, 1836 —The first English-language newspaper,  The Maulmain Chronicle , appears in the city of Moulmein in British-ruled Tenasserim. The paper, first published by a British official named E.A. Blundell, continued up until the 1950s. September 1842 —Tavoy’s  Hsa-tu-gaw  (the  Morning Star ), a monthly publication in the Karen-language of  Sgaw ,  is established by the Baptist mission. It is the first ethnic language newspaper. Circulation reached about three hundred until its publication ceased in 1849. January 1843 —The Baptist mission publishes a monthly newspaper, the Christian  Dhamma  Thadinsa  (the  Religious Herald ), in Moulmein. Supposedly the first Burmese-language newspaper, it continued up until the first year of the second Angl
Post a Comment
Read more

ARSA claims ambush on Myanmar security forces

Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) on Sunday claimed responsibility for an ambush on Myanmar security forces that left several wounded in northern Rakhine state, the first attack in weeks in a region gutted by violence. Rakhine was plunged into turmoil last August, when a series of ARSA raids prompted a military backlash so brutal the UN says it likely amounts to ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya minority. The army campaign sent some 650,000 Rohingya fleeing for Bangladesh, where refugees have given harrowing accounts of rape, murder and arson at the hands of security forces and vigilantes. Myanmar's military, which tightly controls information about Rakhine, denies any abuses and insists the crackdown was a proportionate response to crush the "terrorist" threat. ARSA have launched few attacks in recent months.  But the army reported that "about ten" Rohingya terrorists ambushed a car with hand-made mines and gunfire on Friday morning
Post a Comment
Read more

Thai penis whitening trend raises eyebrows

Image copyright LELUXHOSPITAL Image caption Authorities warn the procedure could be quite painful A supposed trend of penis whitening has captivated Thailand in recent days and left it asking if the country's beauty industry is taking things too far. Skin whitening is nothing new in many Asian countries, where darker skin is often associated with outdoor labour, therefore, being poorer. But even so, when a clip of a clinic's latest intriguing procedure was posted online, it quickly went viral. Thailand's health ministry has since issued a warning over the procedure. The BBC Thai service spoke to one patient who had undergone the treatment, who told them: "I wanted to feel more confident in my swimming briefs". The 30-year-old said his first session of several was two months ago, and he had since seen a definite change in the shade. 'What for?' The original Facebook post from the clinic offering the treatment, which uses lasers to break do
1 comment
Read more