The gaping holes torn in a road to Mandalay by last year’s devastating earthquake have been filled in and the route in northern Myanmar partly resurfaced, but only a few of the broken spans of the historic Ava Bridge have been removed, while the others still droop into the Irrawaddy River, where hundreds of newly homeless people bathed in the aftermath of the disaster.
More than 3,800 people in Myanmar — and about 90 in Thailand — were killed when the magnitude 7.7 tremor struck on March 28 last year.
A year on, reporters returning to the affected areas found a mixed picture of reconstruction work.
Photo: Reuters
In Naypyidaw the collapsed concrete awning of the main hospital’s emergency department — which crushed a car when it came down — has been replaced with a new, lighter structure, with a plastic roof.
A rare unguarded photograph of junta chief Min Aung Hlaing, looking flustered as he sought to direct rescue efforts at the hospital, was one of many that captured the destruction after the quake, which came during a years-long civil war.
Mandalay, an ancient royal capital hemmed by jungle-clad mountains and the snaking Irrawaddy River, bore the brunt of the damage.
At a pagoda in the suburb of Amarapura, a statue of a reclining Buddha emerges from a carefully arranged pile of brick rubble, its face respectfully cleaned.
“Some are rebuilding their houses, while others are just now getting the support they need to work and live,” said board secretary Hsan Tun, 70.
Four people died at the pagoda, he added, including a girl who was meditating.
“It’s only by the Buddha’s protection that we survived,” he added.
Almost all of Mandalay’s flattened or toppled residential buildings have been cleared away, some of them already rebuilt and others remaining as fenced-off empty lots dotting the city.
The tilted-over towers overlooking the palace moat have all been brought back upright and workers are building new brick castellations for their supporting ramparts.
After the quake, thousands of people whose homes had been made uninhabitable or who feared aftershocks slept out for weeks by the moat, but it is once again the preserve of morning joggers and sightseers.
Some of the buildings at the Thahtay Kyaung monastery have been razed.
“People are facing many economic hardships,” said the abbot, U. Thudassa. “Like the saying: ‘When the sky falls, it falls on everyone.’”
In nearby Bon Oe village, the quake caused a mosque to collapse onto people gathered for the noon prayer on the last Friday of Ramadan, killing many.
A permanent replacement has yet to be erected due to red tape.
Instead, men gather for evening prayers in a temporary structure covered in green tarpaulins and with palm leaves for a roof.
“Yesterday marked one year” since disaster struck, said mosque leader Khin Maung Naing, counting by the Islamic calendar. “Everyone still trembles at any loud noise.”
“Even after a year, the tremor, the scenes and the feelings from that earthquake feel as if they happened only yesterday or the day before. To this day, it remains in my heart,” he added.
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