A building which was under construction in Bangkok, Thailand, collapsed after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck Myanmar.
The catastrophic earthquake hit neighboring country Myanmar, which created a ripple effect across the surrounding area, causing chaos in its wake.
While many buildings began to sway due to the tremors, one skyscraper-in-the-making came crashing down.
Footage posted online by onlookers shows the huge building straining above the rocky movements on the ground, and as it wasn’t a finished building, it soon collapsed.
Warning: This video contains scenes which some viewers may find distressing.
In the clip, you can see people desperately trying to run away from the construction site in the Chatuchak district before the skyscraper became a pile of rubble and dust.
While Bangkok police told the Associated Press that officers were responding to the scene, they did not know just how many people were working on the construction site at the time of the incident.
Although there were no immediate reports of casualties, in an update from the BBC, it is believed that 43 construction workers are missing after the 30-storey building collapsed.
Seven workers managed to escape while 43 others remained trapped, the National Institute for Emergency Medicine said in a Facebook post.
Worapat Sukthai, deputy police chief of Bang Sue district, told AFP: “When I arrived to inspect the site, I heard people calling for help, saying help me.”
The earthquake struck Bangkok at approximately 1:30pm local time today (March 28), which caused alarms to blare and people to be evacuated onto the streets.
According to local reports, the Ava Bridge in Myanmar also collapsed due to the earthquake, and another video posted to Twitter showed a Bangkok tower building’s rooftop pool splashing down the side of the building as it swayed.
An officer from the Myanmar Fire Services Department told Reuters there is an active search for casualties in the city.
They said: “We have started the search and going around Yangon to check for casualties and damage. So far, we have no information yet.”
Thailand’s Department of Disaster Prevention explained that the Myanmar earthquake was felt in almost all regions of the country.
While it’s not confirmed just how much damage has been caused in Myanmar, as the country is battling a civil war, reports state that in the capital of Naypyidaw, some homes and religious shrines were affected.
As per the US Geological Survey and Germany’s GFZ Centre for Geosciences, the 7.7 magnitude earthquake had an epicentre at a depth of 6.2 miles below ground, and 12 minutes after the initial quake, a second one hit, which was registered at 6.4 on the Richter scale.
As for why the skyscraper fell, the BBC reports earthquakes are rare in Thailand, so their buildings are not constructed to withstand them.