What happened
Around lunchtime on 28 March 2025, local time, the Sagaing Fault in central Myanmar slipped along several hundred kilometres. Mandalay, Sagaing and the capital Naypyidaw were hit hardest – houses, monasteries, bridges and some historic buildings collapsed. The shaking travelled far: in Bangkok a tower under construction came down, burying workers. Several thousand people died, and relief efforts were hampered by the country's ongoing civil war.
How to read these data
Magnitude measures the energy released at the focus: each step is about 32 times more energy, so an M 9 earthquake releases about a thousand times more energy than an M 7. Its effects, however, also depend on focal depth, distance to cities, ground conditions and building quality – a shallow M 7 beneath a city can be deadlier than a deep M 8 under the ocean.
Data: USGS ComCat (us7000pn9s) · Wikipedia (pl) · Wikipedia (en)