Earthquakes rock Southeast Asia — evacuations in Thailand, Myanmar

Two violent earthquakes rocked Southeast Asia on Friday, causing buildings in the Thai capital Bangkok to sway and prompting evacuations across the city, as well as in neighbouring Myanmar.

The US Geological Survey and Germany’s GFZ centre for geosciences said the midday temblor was a shallow 10 kilometres, with an epicentre in Myanmar, according to preliminary reports.

A second quake, with a magnitude of 6.4, shook the area 12 minutes later.

Water from high-rise rooftop pools in Bangkok sloshed over the side as they shook, and debris fell from many buildings.

Bangkok police say a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Possible casualties were not yet known.

A dramatic video circulated on social media showed the multi-story building with a crane on top collapsing into a cloud of dust, while onlookers screamed and ran.

Police told The Associated Press they were responding to the scene near Bangkok’s popular Chatuchak Market, and had no immediate information on how many workers were on the site at the time of the collapse.

The greater Bangkok area is home to more than 17 million people, many of whom live in high-rise apartments.

Many buildings were evacuated as they swayed in the rare quake.

Alarms went off in buildings as the earthquake hit around 1:30 p.m., and startled residents were evacuated down staircases of high-rise condominiums and hotels in densely populated central Bangkok.

They remained in the streets, seeking shade from the midday sun in the minutes after the quake.

The epicentre of the earthquake was in central Myanmar, about 50 kilometres east of the city of Monywa. There were no immediate reports of the effect of the earthquake in Myanmar, which is in the middle of a civil war.