Rescue efforts greeted with gratitude

At 6 am on Wednesday, I woke up alongside hundreds of earthquake survivors near the moat of Mandalay Palace. Almost 36 hours had passed since my arrival in Myanmar, which was hit by a 7.9 magnitude earthquake on Friday.

The Chinese rescue teams were already hard at work, with generators humming and vehicles bustling. Food and water had been quietly placed outside the pitched mosquito net tents, my temporary residence, likely brought by local volunteer organizations or individual volunteers in the early hours of the day.

Across the street, a woman in her 80s lay trapped under rubble for over four days. Members of the Blue Sky Rescue Team from China have been tirelessly digging for two days and two nights in the deep hope of finding her alive. Around Tuesday midnight, I overheard them discussing their next steps.