Invited Talk
The 2025, M7.7 Mandalay, Myanmar Earthquake: Impacts, Early recovery and Challenges
Myo THANT, Myanmar Institute of Earth and Planetary Sciences,
University of Yangon, and Myanmar Earthquake Committee
myothant05@gmail.com

Biography

Myo Thant is a professor at Myanmar Institute of Earth and Planetary Sciences, and Department of Geology, University of Yangon, the Vice-president of Myanmar Earthquake Committee, and EC member of Myanmar Geosciences Society. He received his D.Eng. degree from Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia with the affiliation of Disaster Prevent Research Institute, Kyoto University. He has been working the seismic hazard assessment for Myanmar in different levels such as national, region/state and city/town levels. His research interests include the studies on the collision of India and Eurasia Plates and the active faults in Myanmar and surrounding regions as the seismic source characterization, the site characterization, and earthquake disaster preparedness and education. His recent works include the seismicity evaluation, construction of geospatial active fault database, upgrading the seismic hazard maps, investigation of the site characteristics of the major cities, and land use and urban planning.

On March 28 2025, the M 7.7 earthquake struck with the epicenter NW of Sagaing, and it was originated from the Sagaing Fault with the total rupture length of above 500 km, propagating the continuous four segments: Sagaing (1956 Sagaing Earthquake) Segment, Meiktila Wundwin (1839 Innwa Event) Segment, Naypyitaw - Swar (1929 Swar Earthquake) Segment and Phyu (1930 Phyu Earthquake) Segment. As the consequence, the impacts are quite intense and adverse, affecting the regions of Mandalay, Sagaing, Bago, Southern Shan State, and Naypyidaw, and Bangkok and Chiang Mai, Thailand. The earthquake is resulted in the significant casualties (above 5,000), injuries (above 10,000), several hundreds of missing, and the widespread destruction. With regards to the primary impact rather than fault rupture, the ground shaking caused the building damages of more than 120,000 which include public and religious buildings and historical structures together with infrastructures such as roads, bridges (e.g. Sagaing Bridge), dams, power and water supplies, etc., while fire, liquefaction, landslides and groundwater fluctuation also happened as the secondary impacts. The military coup that happened in February 2021 has had a devastating impact on Myanmar’s education and healthcare systems, socio-economic development, and disaster response and preparedness plans. About 3.5 million are internally displaced, some are forced to move to the cities such as Yangon, Mandalay, Naypyidaw, and Taunggyi-Inlay. This earthquake affects the population more than 17 million across 57 townships of the country, including those internally displaced people. Aftershocks such as the magnitude 6.7 event happened at about 20 km to the south of Sagaing have also occurred to collapse more buildings and structures which have been fractured by major event. The preliminary assessment is carried out to understand and explain the impacts, early recovery including the emergency responses and the challenges to contribute for the implementation process in the earthquake effected regions. Potential for future earthquakes in nearby areas like southern segments of the fault are reviewed.