An Earthquake and a Perfect Storm in Myanmar

Last week, Yogita Limaye, a correspondent at the BBC, filed a dispatch from Mandalay, the second-largest city in Myanmar, which had just been hit by a devastating earthquake. She reported from a Buddhist academy where dozens of monks had been taking an exam when the building pancaked and where, she said, the “stench of decaying bodies” was now overwhelming; the BBC’s cameras captured relatives crowding around as rescue workers pulled a corpse from the rubble, but it was so disfigured as to be unidentifiable. Elsewhere, Limaye came across ruins where no official relief efforts had yet begun; at one home, local residents had used makeshift equipment to extract the bodies of an older couple, who were found in each other’s arms. Limaye also filmed at a hospital, where wounded people were lined up in rows outdoors. “There were very few doctors and nurses around to cope with the demand for treatment,” she wrote. “Families are stepping in to do what medical staff should.”