President Donald Trump said Friday that the US was going to help with the response to Southeast Asia’s deadly earthquake as Myanmar’s ruling junta made a rare request for international humanitarian aid and declared a state of emergency across six regions.
But the effects of Trump administration’s deep cuts in foreign assistance through the US Agency for International Development and the State Department will likely be tested in any response to the first big natural disaster of his second term.
Sarah Charles, a former senior USAID official who oversaw disaster-response teams and overall humanitarian work under the Biden administration, said the system was now “in shambles,” without the people or resources to move quickly to pull out survivors from collapsed buildings and otherwise save lives.
A powerful quake shook Myanmar and neighboring Thailand on Friday, killing at least 150 people and burying others under the rubble of high-rises.
Asked about the quake by reporters in Washington, Trump said: “We’re going to be helping. We’ve already alerted the people. Yeah, it’s terrible what happened.”
At the State Department, spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters the administration would use requests for assistance and reports from the region to shape its response to the quake.
Meanwhile, Myanmar’s ruling junta appealed for international humanitarian aid after the 7.7-magnitude quake hit central Myanmar.
AFP reporters saw junta chief Min Aung Hlaing arrive at a hospital in Naypyidaw where wounded were being treated.
“We want the international community to give humanitarian aid as soon as possible,” junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told AFP at the hospital.
Casualty numbers have yet to emerge but the fact that the isolated military government is appealing for help — which it rarely does after natural disasters — suggests they could be on a large scale.
The junta said in a statement that a state of emergency was in effect in six of the worst-affected areas: Sagaing, Mandalay, Magway, northeastern Shan State, Naypyidaw, and Bago.
Zaw Min Tun said blood donations were needed for patients in Mandalay, Naypyidaw and Sagaing. The quake was felt across the region, with China, Cambodia, Bangladesh and India all reporting tremors.
