Aubonrat Setnawet, an engineer’s companion, was working with her father on the 23rd floor of a new business building on the north edge of Bangkok times before disaster struck.
She needed to get some tools, so she took the building floor to the floor surface. Immediately, she felt the ground affect beneath her and, with two sharp cracking sound, the empty building began to collapse.
With her mobile phone in hand, she ran to leave the falling dust as a huge dust cloud rose. She tried calling her father, Nuguy Setnawet, an engineer, but her names did not go through.
Since next, she has remained at the page, watching silently as firefighters hunt for victims. The information has been terrible. Eight systems were recovered from the field Friday but only one Saturday.
” I am still here waiting, waiting for a miracle”, Ms Aubonrat said.
About 80 people believed to have been in the 30-storey building at the time of the decline remain unaccounted for.
Rescuers using heavy equipment and horse research teams spotted only the one system during the hunt Saturday. The pile of rubble — seven stories high — is so unpredictable that it took them hours to retrieve the system.
That brought to 10 the number of known mortality in Bangkok from the quake, including a hoist controller who fell to his death from a different building under construction.
The core of the collapse was more than 900km to the northwest near Mandalay,  , Myanmar ‘s , next largest city, where the carnage was far worse. More than 1, 600 were reported dying and the number is expected to rise significantly.
At the webpage of the fell Bangkok tower, the hunt continued into the night under bright lights. Large equipment operators moved large chunks of material from the dust in the hope of finding victims.
Lots of rescuers from the defense, the officers and volunteer groups helped with the research. Lots of relatives and friends of the missing staff watched from behind a hurdle.
In addition to seek dogs, save teams used warmth sensors to try to find people who were still alive.
Periodically, all operate stopped but the searchers could hear for the noises of survivors. But by Saturday night, they had never heard any cries of support from within the hills of particles.
Piyalux Thinkaew, a hero from the Ruamkatanyu Foundation, said large equipment that arrived Saturday was being used to clean apart large pieces of metal and masonry while employees tried carefully not to destabilise the pile of dust.
” This is to start a way for us to be able to see inside and check for any signs of life”, he said. ” It’s a pretty hard task and it’s difficult work for the volunteers as well”.
‘ Like the tower exploded’
Suchatvee Suwansawat, a professor of civil engineering at King Mongkut University and a past president of the Council of Engineers Thailand, said authorities may determine whether the decline was caused by a design flaw or a building problem.
An unfinished building should be in no more danger of collapsing during an earthquake than a completed structure, he said.
” It has to be 100 % safe”, he said. ” There was something wrong. This is like the building exploded. It’s not normal”.
He said , Thailand , had never experienced the collapse of a building this size. Previously, he said, two six-storey buildings collapsed, one in 2014 and one in 1993.
” We really have no experience with this”, he said. ” We cannot say much yet because we have to look at the calculations and collect samples and evidence. Everything collapsed at the same time. And from the video, we saw the columns burst”.
The building was to be an office tower for Bangkok’s auditor-general.
A Chinese state-owned company, the China Railway 10th Engineering Group, was part of a consortium awarded the contract to build the high-rise, according to an article in the People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, that was published in 2021. The consortium also included a Bangkok-based builder, Italian-Thai Development Plc.
Neither company could be immediately reached for comment.
The project, which broke ground in April 2021, was one of the tallest buildings China Railway 10th Engineering Group had constructed, the People’s Daily said at the time.
The company is a subsidiary of a state-owned giant, China Railway Group, which is heavily involved in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a global infrastructure project intended to deepen China’s supply chain networks and expand the country’s influence.
Among those waiting at the site for word of their missing relatives was Saifon Thongsuk, 36, whose aunt and uncle and two adult children were all working on the office tower.
They had been working at a different construction project on Bangkok’s outskirts but had recently been sent to the site because of an urgent need for workers, she said.
” I don’t know how long they had been working here”, she said. ” I only know they were working on the top floor”.
Naruemol Thonglek, 44, came to the site seeking word of six people including her husband, his son and four co-workers.
Ms Naruemol had been working at the site, too, until recently, but quit because her husband worried that it was leaving her too exhausted.
” I rushed here as soon as I heard about the earthquake”, she said. ” I tried to get hold of him. Messages were not delivered. Calls were not connected. I cannot contact any of them”.
She continued,” I guess he is in the middle of that pile of rubble. Maybe there’s some space for air, I don’t know. I can only hope for miracles”.
Thurian Pheungrod, 47, also hurried to the site Friday after learning that his brother and sister-in-law were buried in the collapsed building. They had been working at the site for several months.
” At first, I still believed there could be a miracle”, he said. ” I still had hope. But I don’t hope for miracles anymore”.
This article originally appeared in , The New York Times.