Nurses at a maternity centre in China’s Yunnan Province acted swiftly to protect newborn babies as tremors from Myanmar’s deadly earthquake shook the region on Friday.
A powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar, claiming over 1,644 lives and leaving thousands injured, with tremors felt as far away as south-western China.
Footage shared by CNN depicted nurses desperately clinging to the babies as the hospital was rocked by the tremors.
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According to Beijing’s foreign ministry, no Chinese citizens were reported killed in the powerful earthquake.
Myanmar’s military government reported more than 1,600 fatalities, but experts fear the actual toll could be much higher, taking weeks to fully emerge.
The US Geological Survey estimates that the death toll could exceed 10,000.
A team from China has been deployed to Myanmar to assist in search and rescue efforts.
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This earthquake marks the most powerful seismic event to hit Myanmar in a century.
Geologist Jess Phoenix explained to CNN that the force released by a quake of this magnitude is equivalent to that of approximately 334 atomic bombs.
Another seismologist described the quake as a “great knife cut into the Earth.”
James Jackson from the University of Cambridge stated that the earthquake was caused by a rupture that lasted for “a full minute,” resulting in significant lateral ground movements.
He compared the event to “a piece of paper tearing, with a speed of about two kilometres per second.”
Despite the destructive nature of this phenomenon, it was deemed “not an unexpected event,” according to Shengji Wei, principal investigator at the Earth Observatory of Singapore.
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