Htet Naing Zaw
BBC Burma
Mandalaybc region reports
The backpacks for brightly colored children were scattered among the remains of nursery school
About 15 backpacks for children are torn in the rubble – pink, blue and orange bags with books that pour out.
The Spiderman toys and the letters of the alphabet are dispersed among chairs, tables and slides of the garden on the remains of this nursery school destroyed by the huge earthquake that struck Myanmar on Friday.
It was in the city of Kyaukse, about 40 km (25 miles) south of Mandalay, one of the hardest areas affected by the 7.7 magnitude earthquake which killed at least 2,000 people.
Kywe Nyein cried while he was talking about the death of his five-year-old granddaughter in the earthquake
Kywe Nyein, 71, cries as he explains that his family is preparing to hold the funeral of his five-year-old granddaughter, The Hter San.
He says his mother has lunch when the devastating earthquake started. She ran to school, but the building had completely collapsed.
The little girl’s body was found about three hours later. “Fortunately, we had the body of our Intact beloved, in one piece,” he said.
Thet Hter San was one of the 12 children at least died in nursery school, with a teacher
Residents say there were about 70 children, aged two to seven, at school on Friday, learning happily. But now there is only one bunch of bricks, concrete and iron stems.
The school says that 12 children and a teacher died, but the inhabitants think that the number is at least 40 years old-that is to say how much were in the section at the bottom of the gaps that were collapsed.
Residents and parents are distraught. People say that the whole city came to help with the rescue work and that several bodies were recovered on Friday. They describe mothers who cry and calls the names of their children for a long time in the night.
Now, three days later, the site is silent. People look at me with sorrow engraved on their faces.
Residents think that up to 40 children died when the lower level of preschool collapsed
Help groups warn against an aggravation of the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar, with damaged and overwhelmed hospitals, although the full devastation scale is still emerging.
Before our arrival in Kyaukse, we were in the capital, not Pyi Taw.
The most affected district we saw, there was a building that had been residential districts for civil servants. The whole ground floor had collapsed, leaving the three upper floors still standing on it.
There were traces of blood in the rubble. Intense stench suggested that many people had died there, but there were no sign of rescue work.
It is not clear how many people died when this residential public service building in Nay Pyi Taw collapsed
A group of police officers loaded furniture and household items to trucks and seemed to try to save what was still usable.
The responsible police officer would not give us an interview, although we have been authorized to film for a while.
We could see people cry and sorry, but they did not want to speak to the media, fearing reprisals of the military government.
We ended up with so many questions. How many people were under the rubble? Could one of them still be alive? Why was there no rescue work, even to recover the bodies of the dead?
The wounded were treated in makeshift tents outside the largest hospital in the capital in stifling heat
Only 10 minutes by car, we had visited the largest hospital in the capital – known here under the name of “1,000 -bed hospital”.
The roof of emergencies had collapsed. At the entrance, a sign saying “emergency service” in English lived on the ground.
There were six military medical trucks and several tents outside, where patients evacuated from the hospital were taken care of.
The tents were sprayed with water to relieve people inside the intense heat.
It seemed that there were about 200 injured there, some with bloody heads, others with broken members.
We have seen an official reprimand the staff with other colleagues who had not presented themselves at work during the emergency.
I realized that the man was the Minister of Health, Dr Thet Khaig Win, and I approached him for an interview, but he ridiculed my request.
On the city road, people sat under the trees on the central reservation of the highway, trying to relieve the hot sun.
This is the hottest period of the year – it had to be close to 40C – but they were afraid of being inside the buildings because of the continuous replicas.
We went on our trip to the earthquake area at 4 am on Sunday morning from Yangon, about 600 km (370 miles) south of Mandalay. The road was black, without reverbs.
After more than three hours of driving, we saw a team of around twenty rescuers in orange uniforms, with logos on their vests showing that they had come from Hong Kong. We started to find cracks on the roads while we were riding north.
The route normally has several control points, but we had traveled 185 km (115 miles) before seeing one. A lonely policeman told us that the coming road was closed because of a broken bridge and showed us a diversion.
We hoped to reach Mandalay, the second largest city in Myanmar on Sunday evening.
But the diversion and the problems with our car in the heat made it impossible.
A day later, we finally reached the city. It is in total darkness, without reverbs and houses without electricity or running water.
We are worried about what we find here when morning arrives.
