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| -Signs, Portents, and the Weather- |
| Powerful quake hits Myanmar, damaging famed Bagan temples |
| 2016-08-25 |
| [CHANNELNEWSASIA] A powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Myanmar on Wednesday (Aug 24), killing at least three people and damaging nearly 200 pagodas in the famous ancient capital of Bagan, officials said. The quake, which the US Geological Survey said hit at a depth of 84 kilometres, was also felt across neighbouring Thailand, India and Bangladesh, sending panicked residents rushing onto the streets. Two girls, aged 7 and 15, were killed in Magway region where the quake struck, according to Myanmar's Ministry of Information. A collapsed building in a nearby town also killed a 22-year-old man and injured one woman, local police told AFP. Heavy damage was also reported in Bagan - Myanmar's most famous archaeological site and a major tourist destination 30 kilometres north of the quake's epicentre. Some 171 of the city's more than 2,500 Buddhist monuments were damaged by the tremors, according to a statement posted by the Ministry of Religious and Cultural Affairs on Facebook. "Some were seriously damaged," Aung Kyaw, the local director of Bagan's culture department, told AFP. Photos showed clouds of dust billowing around some of the site's larger temples, with bricks crumbling down their tiered facades. A police officer from Bagan said a Spanish holidaymaker was slightly hurt when the quake knocked her from the temple where she was watching the sunset. Scaling Bagan's ancient structures to watch the sun set over the vast plain of pagodas is a daily ritual among tourists and local pilgrims. Italy rescuers toil through night seeking quake survivors as death toll hits 159 Rescue teams were working through the night to try to find survivors under the rubble that remained of central Italian towns flattened by an earthquake that hit in the early hours of Wednesday, killing at least 159 people. One hotel that collapsed in the small town of Amatrice probably had about 70 guests, and only seven bodies had so far been recovered, said the mayor of the town that was one of the worst hit by the quake. The strong 6.2 magnitude quake razed homes and buckled roads in a cluster of mountain communities 140 km (85 miles) east of Rome. It was powerful enough to be felt in Bologna to the north and Naples to the south, each more than 220 km (135 miles) from the epicenter. "Tonight will be our first nightmare night," said Alessandro Gabrielli, one of hundreds preparing to sleep in tents erected by rescue workers in fields and parking lots, each one housing 12 people whose homes had been destroyed. |
| Posted by:Fred |