Scientists explain why Myanmar quake was so deadly

Experts say the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was the strongest to hit the country in decades, thousands of people may die with disaster modeling.

Automatic assessment from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said that the shallow 7.7-changing earthquake in the northwest of the city of Central Myanmar trigge a red alert for deadly and economic losses related to laxity.

“The number of high -casualties and comprehensive damage is potential and the possibility of disaster is widespread,” it said for more than a million people, locating the sub -station near Mandalay’s Mandalay, the middle of the house of the house.

Myanmar’s ruling Junta said on Saturday morning that the killed number had passed by 1,000, injuring more than 2,000.

However, the USGS analysis stated that there was a 35% chance that possible fatal fatal can be within the range of 10,000–100,000 people.

The USGS offered a similar possibility that financial damage could be a total of millions of dollars, warning that it could exceed Myanmar’s GDP.

The weak infrastructure structure will complicate relief efforts in the military-ruled state, where the rescue services and health care systems have already been destroyed by a four-year civil war by a military coup in 2021.

Hazardous faults

Bill McGir, Professor Professor of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London (UCL), said it was “probably the largest earthquake on Myanmar mainland”.

The first and McGiare warned that 6.7-Criminal Africaock hit after a few minutes that “more expected”.

Rebecca Bell, a tectonics specialist at the Imperial College London (ICL), suggested that it was a side-to-side “strike-slip” of the teak fault.

This is the place where the Indian tectonic plate, in the west, meets the Sunda plate, which makes a lot of south -east Asia – a mistake similar to the scale and movement of San Andreas Fault in California.

“The mistake of the saga is very long, 1,200 kilometers (745 mi), and very straightforward.” “Direct nature means that earthquakes can break into large areas – and the larger the area of ​​mistake, the larger the earthquake is.”

In such cases earthquakes can be “particularly devastating”, Bell said, stating that since the earthquake occurs at a shallow depth, its earthquake energy has decreased until it reaches the populated areas.

It causes “very shaking on the surface”, Bell said.

Building construction

Myanmar has been killed by a powerful quake in the past.

Brian Bapty, an earthquakeist at the British Geological Survey, said in 1956, Mandalay had more than 14 earthquakes with a magnitude of 6 or more including 6.8 earthquakes.

Ian Watkinson, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holowway University in London, said that what had changed in recent decades was “bouncing in high-growing buildings built of reinforced concrete”.

Myanmar has been extended over the years of struggle and has a low level of construction design enforcement.

“Seriously, during all previous magnitude 7 or large earthquakes, with teak faults, Myanmar was relatively undeveloped, mostly with low-increased wooden buildings and brick-made religious monuments,” said Watkinson.

“Today’s earthquake is the first test of modern Myanmar infrastructure against a large, shallow-focus earthquake of its major cities.”

Bapatiya said that at least 2.8 million people in Myanmar were in hard-hit areas, where most of the buildings lived in buildings “built of wood and unchanged brick masonry” which are unsafe for earthquake tremors.

Ilan Kelman, an expert in the disaster in UCL, said, “The general mantra is that ‘earthquakes do not kill people; collapse the infrastructure.”

“Governments are responsible for planning rules and creating codes. The disaster suggests what the governments of Burma/Myanmar failed to do long before the earthquake, which saved lives during shaking.”

Skyscraper check

Strong tremors also shook the neighboring Thailand, where the 30-storey skyscraper under construction was reduced to a pile of dusty concrete, which was trapping workers in the rubble.

Christian Malaga-Chukwitaype of ICL’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department said that the nature of land in Bangkok contributed to the impact on the city, despite being about 1,000 kilometers (620 mi) from the epicenter in Myanmar.

“Even though Bangkok is far from active defects, but its soft soil enhances shaking,” he said. “It affects especially tall buildings during a distant earthquake.”

Malaga-Chikwitaype said that the construction technique in Bangkok is in favor of “flat slab”-where the floor is conducted only by the column by the column only by the column, such as a table-one “problematic design” supported by only legs.

He said that the initial video analysis of the collapsed tower block in Bangkok suggested that this type of construction technique was used.

“It performs poorly during the earthquake, often fails in a brittle and sudden (almost explosive) manner,” he said.

Roberto Gentle, a devastating risk modeling specialist by UCL, stated that the “dramatic collapse” of the Bangkok Tower Block meant that “other long buildings in the city could require a complete evaluation”.

Bangkok City officials said they would deploy more than 100 engineers to inspect buildings for security after receiving reports of more than 2,000 losses.

© 2025 AFP