Naypyidaw:
Over 2,000 people have died following the deadly earthquake in Myanmar, with rescue workers, sniffer dogs and paramedics rushing to find survivors from rubble as the golden rescue window closes fast, diminishing the realistic chances of survival. Amid the chaos, stories of survival are starting to emerge from the ground zero as rescuers continue to grapple with the scale of devastation.
A video emerged on social media showing an elderly woman and her two teenage granddaughters trapped in a small pocket of air under the debris of their home. The girls filmed their desperate cry for help as they used a butter knife to bang on broken concrete to get rescuers’ attention.
2 girls and their grandmother keep calm while trapped under rubble in the Myanmar earthquake. They’ve been rescued, but many are still missing.
My heart aches imagining their terror—the crushing weight, the desperate gasps for air during Myanmar’s devastating earthquake. But… pic.twitter.com/QZTaybBTYj
— Yelisaveta Petrov (@YelisavetaPaUSA) March 31, 2025
The trio was trapped under wreckage for a frightening 15 hours before the rescuers pulled them to safety.
Two other women experienced a similar horror when they waited for five agonising hours for rescues to find them under the rubble of their collapsed hotel in Mandalay, where they sat crouched under broken ceilings amid piles of wreckage.
The duo, who don’t want to be identified, shared their borrowing ordeal during an interview with CNN.
“We were trapped in total darkness, but the good thing is we had a phone and we could use its light to see. If we didn’t have that, we could have died. We could see to clear rubble from on top of each other,” one of the women told CNN.
“While being trapped, we learned that nothing is permanent, and the most important thing to do before death is to live a happy life and to do many good deeds. Don’t do bad things, because karma will follow you,” said another woman.
But alongside the miraculous rescues, tales of devastating losses have also reverberated through Myanmar.
Two hundred Buddhist monks were crushed by a collapsing monastery, fifty children killed when a preschool classroom crumbled, and seven hundred Muslims were struck while praying at mosques for Ramadan.
Survivors Without Food, Shelter
Aid groups arriving in the worst-hit areas of Myanmar said there was an urgent need for shelter, food and water for survivors. Civil war in Myanmar, where the junta seized power in a coup in 2021, has complicated efforts to reach those injured and made homeless by the Southeast Asian nation’s biggest quake in a century.
The junta’s tight control over communication networks and the damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure caused by the quakes have intensified the challenges for aid workers.
“In the hardest-hit areas …communities struggle to meet their basic needs, such as access to clean water and sanitation, while emergency teams work tirelessly to locate survivors and provide life-saving aid,” the UN body said in a report.
The International Rescue Committee said shelter, food, water and medical help were all needed in places such as Mandalay, near the epicentre of the quake.
“Having lived through the terror of the earthquake, people now fear aftershocks and are sleeping outside on roads or in open fields,” an IRC worker in Mandalay said in a report.
“There is an urgent need for tents, as even those whose homes remain intact are too afraid to sleep indoors.”
The 7.7 magnitude quake, which hit around lunchtime on Friday, was the strongest to hit the Southeast Asian country in more than a century, toppling ancient pagodas and modern buildings alike.
State media has reported Myanmar’s casulties at 2,065, with more than 3,900 injured and at least 270 missing.