Volunteers are rescuing survivors of Friday’s devastating earthquake in Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw with few tools and little help from the Myanmar military.
By FRONTIER
Twenty volunteers staggered out from the ruins of the Sky Villa condominium in Mandalay, dust covering their fluorescent yellow jackets and haggard faces.
They had worked nonstop for 10 hours and were immediately replaced by another group of volunteers. They included Ko Tun Win, a man in his 20s from a local charitable group. Speaking to Frontier on Monday evening, he said the rescue workers responding to Friday’s devastating earthquake are mainly volunteers like himself, toiling with little know-how and few tools, and with scant support from the military regime.
“There was no equipment on the first day. We removed debris with our own hands and with small hammers at a place where we heard people screaming for help. The next day our group arranged to hire a crane,” Tun Win told Frontier, asking to withhold his real name and that of his organisation for security reasons.
“We have no experience with earthquakes. But when we heard the screams of people calling for help at the collapsed buildings we decided to go and rescue them. We started working that same night [after the earthquake],” he said.
The 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck 20 kilometres northwest of Mandalay at 12:51pm on March 28, causing widespread destruction in the towns of Mandalay, Sagaing and Meiktila, as well as the country’s capital Nay Pyi Taw.
The junta said that as of April 2 more than 2,700 people had been confirmed dead, with 3,900 injured and 300 missing. However, the United States Geological Survey has warned that the death toll could eventually exceed 10,000.
The first 72 hours after an earthquake are considered the key window for rescuing people. Although that time frame passed on Monday afternoon, rescue teams say they won’t give up because they can still hear the cries of trapped people.
“We hear their screams all the time. The more we hear them, the more we make an effort to remove the debris. We can’t control our tears,” Tun Win said.
The Sky Villa, located in central Mandalay’s Aung Myay Thar Zan Township, consists of three buildings of 11 storeys each. Two of the buildings completely collapsed, while only five storeys of the third building remain standing. The severe damage resulted in one of the highest casualty rates in Mandalay, according to rescue teams.
The volunteer teams can only work with permission from the junta. When Frontier approached the Sky Villa with some volunteers on Monday, two soldiers barred the group from entering the area.
Moreover, the junta didn’t allow teams like Tun Win’s to start working right away.
“When we arrived at Sky Villa at night, a military force of about 20 soldiers and a commanding officer arrived as well. They didn’t allow us to start our rescue operations at first. Some of them inspected and searched the collapsed building. It took about an hour before they let us in, then they left,” Tun Win said.
Soldiers absent from rescue efforts
Meanwhile, soldiers are rarely seen contributing to rescue and recovery efforts. Frontier saw a few soldiers guarding heavily damaged areas in Mandalay, but virtually no military presence at rescue areas in Nay Pyi Taw.
A resident of 60th Street in Mandalay said there was a shortage of junta troops in the city even before the earthquake due to the deepening conflict with resistance forces in other areas of Mandalay Region.
“I don’t see soldiers doing rescue work. Before the earthquake, they even used military medical personnel and Pyusawhti [junta-aligned militias] at the city’s checkpoints and gates. I think there aren’t enough soldiers to work on the rescue efforts,” he said.
“We’re in a really difficult situation. The military has more manpower and equipment than the volunteer teams. It would be better if soldiers worked with them. Volunteer rescue teams don’t get a lot of support and their capacity is limited. So the more people who are working, the better. But now we only see soldiers on security details when their generals visit the disaster sites,” he added.
Tun Win speculated that soldiers may simply not know how to rescue those trapped after the earthquake.
“I heard their military bases were also damaged, and it looks like they don’t know how to work in collapsed buildings. So they cannot work like they worked in previous disasters,” he said.
Frontier found that most of the rescue work in Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw was being done by teams of volunteers in cooperation with the junta’s local fire departments, while other organisations were virtually absent.
“There are five to six volunteer rescue teams, including us, and we work in shifts,” Tun Win said. “Fire trucks from the fire department are on standby because there are fires burning inside many buildings. The main workers are volunteers from charities and the fire department. There are no people from the Myanmar Red Cross Society or the International Committee of the Red Cross.”
Frontier tried contacting the ICRC by email on Monday but didn’t receive a response.
Lack of equipment
Another problem hobbling the rescue and recovery efforts is the lack of proper equipment.
Rescue teams said junta officials finally showed up on Sunday and distributed helmets, boots and fluorescent yellow rescue jackets, but still didn’t provide any tools or equipment that could be used to dig through the rubble of collapsed buildings.
“We need equipment like cutting tools to remove stuck debris. Instead we have to do the best we can with what little we have,” Tun Win said.
Even the junta’s fire departments lack the right tools. A Nay Pyi Taw resident told Frontier that a dearth of equipment has caused the deaths of many people who otherwise could have been saved.
“A woman in my neighbourhood who was trapped was rescued by the fire rescuers on the night of the earthquake, but she died on the way to the hospital,” the resident said. “If the rescue team had been able to reach people faster, they could have saved many more lives. But there is no rescue equipment. I saw them spend one hour cutting through a one-inch iron bar.”
Some Nay Pyi Taw residents also accused the junta of focusing their rescue operations on government buildings while ignoring residential areas.
Frontier witnessed firefighters and a team from the Royal Thai Armed Forces working at civil servant housing in Zabuthiri Township. Meanwhile, residents of Pyinmana town were left to conduct rescue operations on their own.
“Volunteers can’t work effectively on their own. There’s a building on our street that they can’t get the bodies out of. We can smell the corpses whenever we walk past,” a Pyinmina resident told Frontier on Monday. “If we want to clear up collapsed buildings, we have to hire workers. No one has come to help us.”
He said the fee to hire labourers is K20,000 (about US$5 at the market rate) per person for four hours of work.
“Even then, workers are scarce,” he said.
Although the junta seems not to be imposing restrictions on rescue work in Nay Pyi Taw, volunteers are having difficulty carrying out their work there because they lack adequate resources. A team from the Yangon-based foundation Moe Saydanar travelled to Nay Pyi Taw to help, but one of its members told Frontier that the team is struggling to get donations.
“We need body bags, gloves and masks. The most difficult thing to find right now are body bags. The number of deaths is very high and we need many donors,” he said. “There are not many donations related to the earthquake except from our regular donors. We had to use our own money to come to Nay Pyi Taw.”
