Rescuers are racing against time to find survivors in the ruins of a Bangkok high rise building. The structure collapsed when a 7.7 earthquake hit Thailand and Myanmar on Friday, killing more than 1,600 people.
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:00Here you can see the full scale of this enormous rescue operation.
00:07There's everything from paramedics and specialist rescuers all the way through to local businesses
00:14and volunteer organisations that have set up to keep everyone fed and hydrated because
00:19it is punishingly hot here in Bangkok and this rescue operation has not stopped since
00:26this disaster first occurred around lunchtime on Friday. There are also
00:33dozens and dozens of people who have gathered here to find out, to wait really, to find out
00:39the fate of their loved ones who they fear trapped under the building. We've had a chat to a few of
00:44them. Here's what they had to say. I came to look for my brother. He's stuck inside. I think he was
00:53on 26th floor. I feel miserable and my mum keeps crying. She's at home now at her room and she's
01:02crying all the time. When she came she also cried. Around 20 minutes past one the building started
01:12to bend and I heard a very loud noise like a ceiling, like a big block of ceiling falling
01:17down. It was so loud and people started to run away. I was on the fifth floor. I think I was the
01:23last one that made it out from the building. A lot of old people inside that they could not make it.
01:30It's an extremely arduous and complicated rescue operation. As one of the rescuers described to us
01:37the building really pancaked down on itself and he said inside it's really a mess of concrete
01:44obviously but also steel and mirrors as well. The other thing that they're dealing with is that now
01:50obviously it's an extremely unstable structure so there's a lot of work to be done to make sure that
01:56while they are trying to clear away the concrete and other debris with the excavators that you can
02:02see they've employed they don't do anything that will put those rescue workers in further danger.
02:09Now this operation has been going non-stop since it first occurred on Friday around lunchtime here
02:18local Thai time and it looks like it could continue now for some days even weeks.