School hit by landslide in Mae Sot: Thai soldiers have very lucky escape
There’s an amazing video doing the rounds of a school hit by a landslide in Mae Sot, Thailand. What’s so astonishing about the video is, not just the heavy rains that caused one large two-storey building to completely collapse, but that Thai soldiers working in the building had a very lucky escape.
Why did the school building in Mae Sot collapse?
From what Thai TV has reported on the incident, the Mae Sot school was first hit by a landslide over a week ago. Luckily, it happened on the weekend, so nobody was in the building when the landslide hit, but the landslide itself caused deep cracks to appear in walls all over the building and knocked the school building partially off its foundations.
Fast forward to the day after. The school building is cordoned off to prevent pupils or staff entering, while a group of Thai soldiers and workmen attempt to salvage window frames, door frames, desks, tables etc, as it was looking pretty obvious the building would likely have to be demolished.
While the work was going on, several loud cracking noises were heard, which prompted the people working inside to leave the building and warn everyone in the vicinity it may be about to collapse.
Only minutes later, that’s exactly what happened. With creaks and groans and a heckuva lot of dust, the entire building fell in on itself and collapsed in one huge heap.
You can watch the whole incident on the video below taken from Thailand’s Channel 3 news broadcast. It repeats itself a little, as Thai news channels are wont to do (not sure why?), but you’ll see that the building was hit by a landslide initially and then see video footage of Thai soldiers doing salvage work.
Immediately afterwards, you can watch as the entire school building groans and heavs and then…….collapses.
All I can say is that was one lucky escape, and a very sad end to what looked like a beautiful Thai school building.
