Headline news like this that shocked the world, minutes after it happened on March 28, 2025 at 1:20 p.m (Thailand Time); “The Thai capital, Bangkok, sits more than 1,000km (621 miles) from the epicentre of Friday's earthquake - and yet an unfinished high-rise building in the city was felled by it.” BBC
I was stunned after my brother showed me a video clip of how a tower block felled to the ground- OMG! ‘Will our building be the next?’- I was among hundreds of residents who ran before the alarm rang for their lives minutes earlier and I had a silent prayer with my eyes looking at my building, my home- Oh no, Please!
Let me only touch on the ‘ Skyfall’ issue as to why the 33-story building in Bangkok trembling down like a pancake, resembling the 9-11.
In fact, it is like a replica of the stereotype of the process of demolition of old buildings by planting explosive C4 or TNT devices at building’s super structures to blast it down, one by one… That’s how it looks!
The “Pancake collapse” in 1999 Turkey Earthquake, we saw many buildings collapse this way due to poor concrete strength and flimsy structural frameworks (regardless of the building’s age, old or new.)- a heap of rubble after 2 minutes of horror.
A failure from weak support columns frameworks where lower floors are weaker, or poor construction.
If the lower floors fail first, the upper floors lose support and stack on top of each other like pancakes… Nothing is left.
Bangkok’s 33- story building that collapsed wasn’t caused by foundation shifts thus caused the ground movement. If not, the building might tilt and fall over sideways instead of straight down. And that is the damage buildings suffer is typically affected by the earthquake from all over the world.
The tremors from a powerful Earthquake from Myanmar didn’t directly cause the 33-story Bangkok’s building to collapse —but the “Structure: A "Strong core + beamless floor" (板+ 心), boasting enhanced strength and earthquake resistance.” China’s construction firm did.
It’s impact did the maximum damage and costly building to fall, A 2.13 billion baht long awaiting government project has become a pile of rubble.
Sadly 78 workers are still missing, not sure if they are still alive.
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