Bangkok has new fears on skyscrapers buildings after the Myanmar earthquake

When the land started to swing under his home in Bangkok on Friday, Kanittha Thepasak thought it was simply dizziness. Then he felt a strange creaking sound, he saw a lamp that moved and threw aside a tent to find machines that swayed like boats at sea.

The roads were full of people who had rushed out, fixing the buildings of condominiums, glass office towers and unfinished constructions around them. Now Mrs. Kanittha barely manages to imagine returning to the office where she spends most of her days. It is on the 29th floor.

“I’m out of my mind, I’m worried,” he said. “The Thai do not have a basic understanding of earthquakes because we never really experience them.”

The earthquake that devastated Myanmar on Friday did much less damage in nearby Thailand, but its pure strength – with a size of 7.7 – emptied Bangkok, a city of towers, in the streets. Sunday, two days later, as government and Thai engineers inspected Hundreds of damaged structures to make sure they could be occupied, it was still obscuring routine thoughts that include more and more dozen stories above ground.

The most devastating scene of the disaster in Thailand came from the complete collapse of a Bangkok building that had been under construction. At least 11 workers were reported dead from Sunday and with about 75 still non -accounting, the rescue crews continued to carefully pull the rubble with a dozen excavators and eight dogs trained to find the dead and the living.

Andy Redmond, a member of the K9 team, said that all the signs on Sunday indicated the corpses, with such a overwhelming perfume that the dogs fought to identify individual remains.

“It’s a learning curve,” he said, resting between research missions that had held him on the site from Friday afternoon. “You can’t train for this.”

The video of the dramatic fall of the building seems engraved in the minds of many, altering the way the residents see their city. For about a decade, Bangkok was moving, up and outwards, with a construction boom fueled by the expansion of his subway and Skytrain.

But now, with at least a dozen cranes in the balance on the skyline, gray steel and cement skeletons that once reported economic growth has taken on a threatening quality.

Somreutal Nilbanjong, 34, found herself looking in one of these buildings in the center on Sunday afternoon while returning home. I asked what he was thinking, he said: “He scares me just to look at him”.

A small construction elevator climbed on the outside through pink scaffolding. He churned through the phone until he found a photo of the mood of rubble a few kilometers away: the collapsed building, Bangkok’s Ground Zero.

Goose skin appeared on her arms and she shivered.

“I’m afraid what will happen again,” he said.

Government officials tried to calm people’s nerves and keep people updated.

Immediately after Friday’s earthquake, the Thai Prime Minister, Lake Shinawatra, issued an urgent notice that warns people to be wary of settlement shocks for the next 24 hours.

On that evening, he tried to reassure the public by announcing that the situation had stabilized and that the residents could return to their homes.

Saturday, he ridden on the high railway of Bangkok, known as Skytrain, to show that the trains were safe. The system had been closed after the earthquake and inspected before most of the lines were reopened.

But even if the city has re-emerged towards the normality-commercial and markets, it trains the grumbling on the streets full of motorcycles-molte people are struggling to develop something they had thought had only happened in other places, such as Japan or Taiwan.

Mrs. Kanittha said that the experience was so confused that her mind ran to memories of what she had seen in the Japanese comics or in the manga depicting Disasters.

Many people said they weren’t necessarily frightened, but that they were forced to ask unexpected questions: behind the glass facades, are the buildings really safe? What if there are cracks that cannot be seen? What if there was a gigantic scar of settlement?

Jiraporn Jaichob, 41 years old, an owner of a stable who was having lunch when he hit the tempblor, said he was making plans for future disasters.

He was thinking of buying a transistor radio since he saw the coverage of the cell phone decrease. He also created a family bag with key documents and supplies.

“With this earthquake we learned that we don’t know what could happen on a certain day,” he said.

“We can die at any time, wherever, I know, it’s our destiny,” he added. “But at least we take care of our life where we can.”

Thailand updated its building code resistant to earthquakes in 2007 and the experts said that the vast majority of the city buildings was clearly strong enough to resist what should still be considered a rare seismic event. However, some engineers have requested greater control and potential update in standards and application.

“Look at Japan: they continue to develop their laws and the design,” said SuChatvee Suwansawat, a civil engineering professor at King Mongkut University and a former Prince of the Council of Engineers Thailand. “We should do it too.”

The collapse of the 30 -storey building, which had risen next to a shopping center and the popular weekend market, could be a turning point. He would never have to hold up, said dr. SuCratvee, suggesting that something went wrong in design, execution or supervision.

At four years of construction, the 10th group of engineering China Railway was built by a Chinese state company. The Thai government has promised to investigate and report the first results in a week.

But like other frightening buildings they collapse: the condominium tower in Surfside, Florida, who killed 98 people in 2021; Or the demolition of the World Trade Center from terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 – The balance of destruction seems likely that they discourage themselves.

Dusk Sunday, shock, pain and dust mixed in the air on the collapse site, where a considerable crowd was collected. Voluntary rescuers from the police and the military who wear bicycle suits inside and outside the area. At a certain point, a crane holds two observers over the top of the mood of rubble while the men with yellow hats fixed from the bottom.

At the perimeter, the father of a Pakistani worker told journalists that people were praying in the temples throughout Thailand and that he hoped that at least half of the workers would come out alive.

Aubonrat Setnawet still hoped for good news about her husband. He had been on the 23rd floor of the building when the earthquake hit; He had also been there, working, but on the ground floor, not far from where he sat on Sunday in a soft plastic chair near a hard metal fence.

“No updates,” said Piano. Everything he could indicate were more relatives next to her, since the noisy grinding of dug and cassonet trucks filled the air.

On the market on the other side of the road, Jatpol Sawangphanich, 42 years old, put the ribbon over the cracks of a metal grid that protects his tropical fish activity.

“Every time they lift the rubble, the dust flies in this direction,” he said.

Next to him, the lights of a usually busy shopping center had become dark. Its structural integrity had yet to be tested.

“This happened everywhere in Bangkok,” he said. “I would prefer not to go to high buildings.”