An effective magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck main Myanmar(previously Burma) Friday(March 28), shaking Mandalay, the nation’s second-largest city, along with close-by nations, consisting of China and Thailand, the U.S. Geological Survey(USGS)reported.

The shallow earthquake struck at 12:50 p.m. regional time (2:20 a.m. EDT )at a depth of about 6.2 miles( 10 kilometers), the USGS reportedSimply 12 minutes later on, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake at the exact same depth shook south of the very first one, and later on that day, 9 smaller sized earthquakes, varying from magnitude 4.4 to 4.9, likewise struck the area.

A minimum of 144 individuals were eliminated in the earthquakes, and 732 were hurt, Myanmar’s military junta stated, according to The Washington PostAn abbey and several structures likewise collapsed in Myanmar. In Bangkok, a minimum of 10 individuals passed away when a 33-story high-rise under building and construction dropped; Thai authorities likewise stated 16 individuals were hurt and 101 were missing out on, the Associated Press reported

Bangkok was “well removed from where the faulting was” in Myanmar, “it’s a very big earthquake and it’s not really surprising it would have been felt for that amount of distance,” Gregory Berozaa teacher of geophysics at Stanford University, informed Live Science.

The earthquakes struck at the Sagaing Fault, which runs north-south and covers almost 1,000 miles (1,600 kmthrough Myanmar towards the Andaman Sea. Earthquakes that take place on this fault are understood strike-slip quakes, in which one block of land relocations horizontally past a block of arrive on the opposite of the fault, according to the USGS. This is a comparable setup as the San Andreas Fault in Californiawhich is likewise a strike-slip fault.

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Myanmar, which is simply south of the Himalayas, is a seismically active area and understood for its huge earthquakes, Ben van der Pluijma teacher emeritus of geology at the University of Michigan, informed Live Science.

“The reason for that is that the continent of India sits on the Indian Plate. And the Indian Plate has been moving northward for around 100 million years,” van der Pluijm stated. “But around 40 million years ago or so, India connected with the Eurasian Plate and kept on traveling northwards into the Eurasian Plate.” Over countless years, that crash assisted develop the Himalayas

Even today, the Indian Plate is still moving northward, into the Eurasian plate. That movement “is what accumulated the energy that gets released in earthquakes like today’s earthquakes in Southeastern Asia,” van der Pluijm stated.

Today’s magnitude 7.7 earthquake was so huge that it would not be unexpected if the ground were displaced a number of meters horizontally, van der Pluijm included.

“This is a very big earthquake,” he stated. “We don’t have many of these.”

Due to the fact that these earthquakes were so shallow, they might be compared to the magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 earthquakes that struck Turkey in 2023 and triggered extensive death and damage, stated Jeffrey Parka teacher of Earth and planetary sciences who concentrates on earthquakes and Earth structure at Yale University.

“We should expect the same kind of damage report and also loss of life from this earthquake because it’s a shallow earthquake that’s in a heavily populated area of Burma,” Park informed Live Science.

Given that 1900, the area has actually had 6 other magnitude 7 or higher huge strike-slip earthquakes within about 155 miles (250 km) these days’s earthquake, according to the USGS. The most current one, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake in January 1990, triggered 32 structures to collapse. An even larger one– a magnitude 7.9– shook south these days’s earthquake center in February 1912.

Laura is the archaeology and Life’s Little Mysteries editor at Live Science. She likewise reports on basic science, consisting of paleontology. Her work has actually appeared in The New York Times, Scholastic, Popular Science and Spectrum, a website on autism research study. She has actually won numerous awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Washington Newspaper Publishers Association for her reporting at a weekly paper near Seattle. Laura holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature and psychology from Washington University in St. Louis and a master’s degree in science composing from NYU.