Daily Times

The earth shook violently along the Myanmar-Thailand border on Friday, claiming 144 lives, injuring hundreds, and reducing villages to rubble. As survivors dig through debris with bare hands, one truth screams louder than the aftershocks: This tragedy was not merely inevitable. It was preventable.

Southeast Asia’s seismic fragility is no secret. The region sits atop volatile tectonic boundaries and has endured repeated disasters. Yet despite decades of warnings, governments treat preparedness as an afterthought. In Myanmar’s hardest-hit regions, homes still crumble like sandcastles because building codes exist only on paper.

Climate change amplifies the carnage. While tectonic shifts trigger quakes, human-driven environmental degradation primes the land for secondary disasters. Rampant deforestation has stripped hillsides bare, turning them into mudslide death traps during tremors. Unchecked urbanization along fault lines ignores expert warnings, prioritizing profit over survival.

Rescue teams now race against time and broken infrastructure. Myanmar declared a state of emergency and appealed for international assistance. In Thailand, emergency crews are working frantically to free dozens trapped beneath fallen concrete. NGOs like the Red Cross are stepping in, but the scale of need is immense.

Every disaster sparks the same cycle: global aid pours in, officials vow “never again,” then budgets for early warning systems vanish into bureaucratic black holes. Japan’s success in slashing earthquake deaths proves this is solvable. Meanwhile, ASEAN’s Disaster Management Agreement remains a toothless paper tiger, paralyzed by sovereignty squabbles.

It’s time they stepped up. ASEAN must mandate binding building standards for fault-line nations. No more “guidelines”-penalize non-compliance with sanctions. It would do well to rebuild with bamboo-based composites and elevated shelters to withstand floods. This quake isn’t just Myanmar or Thailand’s crisis but a test of regional conscience. When a school collapses on children, “acts of God” no longer suffice as excuses. These are acts of human indifference.

The monsoon clouds gathering over the rubble carry a warning: The next disaster is coming. Will we keep counting bodies, or finally count the cost of complacency? *