‘She kept asking for him and crying’: The earthquake through a rescue worker’s eyes

On the first day of April, social worker and rescue volunteer Wai Lin Thit rushed to the city of Sagaing in central Myanmar, which—along with the larger cities of Mandalay and Naypyitaw—had been struck by a 7.7-magnitude earthquake three days earlier, impacting an area inhabited by some 17 million people. 

As the disastrous news broke throughout the country and spread to screens and airwaves around the world, Wai Lin Thit left his home city of Yangon. Along with the team of rescue volunteers he had formed from a group of complete strangers, he set out to save any lives he could in the country’s devastated heartland.