Sagaing, Myanmar – “There are now gusts of winds and the smell of corpses fills the air,” says Saal Nage, a resident of Sagaing, the city closest to the epicenter of the devastating magnitude 7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar on Friday.
“At this point, more bodies have been recovered than the survivors,” Thar Nge told Al Jazeera on Sunday, reopening rescuers from nearby Mandalay, who had just appeared earlier in the day, after the Yadanabon Bridge.
The nearby AVA bridge, built during British colonial rule about 90 years ago, is one of many structures that collapse when an earthquake hits more than 48 hours ago, killing at least 1,700 people and injuring more than 3,400 people.
“The rescue team from Mandalay couldn’t contact us immediately because the bridge collapsed, so they only arrived today,” Thar Nge said.
He said many in the city have lost loved ones.
So far, almost 90 bodies have been recovered – compared to 36 people Tharnge knew but were rescued from flattened homes, businesses and numerous Buddhist temples in the area.
“Many people, like monks and monks, are trapped under buildings that include monasteries and nuunnies,” he said.
“The focus is to change from saving livelihoods to collecting and burying the dead.”
The smell of a decaying body is everywhere in the magician.
Located 22 km (14 miles) east, Mandalay, the country’s second largest city, lack of specialized equipment trapped rescuers and parents of those who had dug up bare hands to find survivors.
The conditions are strict.
In addition to the crumpled roads, the entire building block was severely damaged or destroyed, leaving most of Mandalay and Sagar dead. Both cities were born on Sundays at 39 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit).
Previously, the distraught Coinmou could hardly wait for help in Mandalay’s collapsed house.
“My mother and my two sons are still trapped under the wreckage,” he told Al Jazeera.
Even if he could get signals to ask for help on his cell phone, a small number of rescue teams in Mandalay are prioritizing large disaster areas where many people are believed to be trapped, Ko Lin Maw said.
“The number of rescuers is clearly not enough to save the victims,” he said. He lamented that 48 hours have passed since the earthquake, and that not enough emergency workers or aid supplies have yet to reach the city.
Htet Wai, a worker at the Myanmar Fire Station, arrived in Mandalay on Sunday morning, 627km (390 miles) south of the country’s commercial capital, Yangon.
Communication in Quake’s aftermath was severely hampered, leaving behind a barely working mobile phone service and a sketchy internet connection, HTET Wai said how his team relied on information posted on Facebook to determine where they needed help most.
“As soon as I arrived this morning, I went to a place I found online,” Htet Wai said.
However, their first rescue was a recovery from the body, he said.
Htet Wai said he and his colleagues would maintain hope despite the situation being very disastrous.
“In this heat, we are afraid to find more bodies than survivors. But we will do our best to save as many lives as possible,” he told Al Jazeera.
He said that in addition to more skilled rescuers and heavy equipment to move the tiled rubber, a body bag was urgently needed.
The weather forecast predicts that daytime temperatures could reach above 40C (104F) this week, with HTET WAI saying the bodies of people who have died and still trapped under the buildings are rapidly corrupted.
“The body we found had already broken down, and that’s heartbreaking,” he said.
“This is beyond what we can handle on our own,” he added.
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