BANGKOK - Hnin Nu Yee, a migrant worker from Myanmar, was on the ground floor of a high-rise office in Bangkok tending to construction trash when shock waves from an earthquake, hundreds of kilometers away in her home country, shook the building.
As the unfinished 32-story tower swayed, people around her started running. Hnin fled too, escaping what in seconds became an apocalyptic mound of crumpled steel and concrete.
Her friends working on higher floors were entombed in the rubble.
“I didn’t even realize the earthquake had happened. People were running, so I ran too,” Hnin told Radio Free Asia.
“I was doing sanitation work, throwing out garbage bags,” she said. “I escaped because I had a chance to run. Others from the upper floors could not run.”
The magnitude 7.7 earthquake Friday near Myanmar’s second-largest city, Mandalay, killed at least 1,600 people in the Southeast Asian country, which was already riven by a protracted civil war, and destroyed temples, homes, roads and bridges.
It caused panic 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) away in Bangkok as tens of thousands of people poured in to the streets from office towers and skyscraper condos.
Yet most of the presumed victims of the Bangkok building collapse are from Myanmar and other countries in the region. Thai police said 13 people are confirmed dead and 118 are missing as the search of the rubble enters its third day.
“I don’t know how many were trapped,” Hnin said. “I can’t say how many because so many Burmese were working here.”
Millions of migrants work in Thailand
Wealthier than most of its neighbors, Thailand and especially its capital Bangkok is kept ticking by millions of migrant workers from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos who often labor in the riskiest industries with limited legal protections.
Trucks crammed with workers transport them from makeshift corrugated iron dormitories to condo, office and mall construction projects around the sprawling city. Tourists ordering spicy prawn soup at a restaurant are more likely to be served by a waiter from Myanmar than Thailand.
Myanmar’s civil war has added to the influx of workers. Economic hardship and fear of conscription have been pushing as many as 22,000 Myanmar citizens into Thailand every month, according to a 2024 study by the International Organization for Migration. Up to 7 million Myanmar migrants are now believed to be living in Thailand.
‘I am grieving’
Hnin, from Myanaung in Myanmar’s Ayeyawady region, said she returned to the construction site on Saturday in case any her of friends were there.
“I felt sad for those who were working with me. Even though we weren’t family, I felt sorry for those I was working with,” she said.
“I want to say I am grieving with their families.”
In sweltering heat and air laden with dust, hundreds of police and rescue workers have swarmed around the unstable mountain of rubble in the painstaking search for any survivors.
“We Thais are working our hardest to try to rescue them,” said Suchatvee Suwansawat, part of a team of engineers involved in the rescue operation.
“We will see how many survivors we can find, but it is very hard. This is something we have never faced before,” he told RFA.
He said it’s not yet known why the nearly completed building imploded. Dozens of other tall Bangkok buildings swayed during the quake, as earthquake proofing designs them to do, without collapsing.
Construction of the new premises for Thailand’s state audit agency was overseen by state-owned China Railway 10th Bureau, which secured the building contract in 2020 as part of a consortium, according to Seatao, a Chinese site that reports on Beijing’s Belt & Road global infrastructure plan.
It said the 32-story tower was the largest building project undertaken by China Railway 10th Bureau. The consortium included Thai construction company Italian-Thai.
A man from the Bago region in Myanmar, who didn’t give his name, said he earned about 500 baht (US$15) a day as a construction worker on the building.
“We were working on about the third floor and when my whole body started feeling shaky and dizzy, I realized the earthquake was happening,” he said. “I jumped down and ran as fast as I could.”
Only four people out of the 11 people in his team have been found, he said.
“I’ve never experienced something like this,” he said. “I’m just scared.”
Edited by Malcolm Foster.