The powerful earthquake that shook Myanmar on Friday took a considerable toll on historic and religious sites across the country, toppling pagodas, collapsing sections of Buddhist monasteries and reducing centuries-old monuments to rubble, according to photographs and videos shared by witnesses and verified by The New York Times.
In its latest count on Saturday morning, Myanmar’s government said that over 3,000 buildings had been damaged, including about 150 mosques and pagodas.
Southwest of Mandalay, the 200-year-old Me Nu Brick Monastery appeared to be largely destroyed. Tiers of the building’s distinctive balconies had collapsed around the bulky interior walls.
Southeast of Mandalay, a video showed the ornate golden spire of the Shwe Sar Yan Pagoda toppling over, to the screams of onlookers.
Seconds later, video showed their five-story monastery building collapsing before them. Dozens of monks who lived at the monastery slept out on mats in nearby streets on Friday night. One of them, Moe Nat Ashin, photographed the scene.
Photos shared by the Burma Human Rights Network showed fallen minarets and domes of mosques in several parts of the country. The online news outlet Mizzima, citing local officials and residents, reported that 490 people were killed in mosque collapses on Friday.
In Pindaya, 70 miles from the epicenter, Buddhist monuments known as stupas that adorned a large monastery were toppled, and cracks split the foundations of others that survived.
All around the stupas, the remains of golden spires and the red bricks common to the region littered the ground.
In one witness video, onlookers wailed as the top of the monastery’s largest stupas crumbled in an aftershock.
“Pindaya felt some earthquakes before but not so strong like today’s,” said Tun Tun Aye, the administrator of a Facebook page for the monastery. He said that the stupas were believed to be more than a century old, and that he did not know how the monastery would be restored.
In Nepal in 2015, billions of dollars were pledged toward reconstruction after two earthquakes devastated the country. Initially hampered by bureaucracy, the restoration led to a resurgence in traditional craftsmanship in the country.
But in Myanmar, which is ruled by a military junta that has terrorized civilian areas as it battles a rebel movement, establishing a unified and internationally supported reconstruction effort is likely to be more challenging.
