The destructive power of earthquakes is mostly documented in the aftermath, seen through toppled down buildings and torn up roads. However, the ground shifting had never been caught on video…until now. A security camera recorded the moment the floor cracked open and slid along a major fault line during the strong earthquake that hit Myanmar earlier this year.
The video was believed to have been captured by CCTV at the Green Power Energy Solar Project in Tha Pyay Wa, Mandalay. And while other earthquakes around the world have captured buildings coming down and items flying off the shelves at supermarkets, this appears to be a world-first. The video shows the moment the ground is ruptured along the Sagaing fault line near the epicenter. This is a rare sight due to the epicenters of many earthquakes often being away from populated areas, and even if there were people around, the strength of the movement makes it impossible for people to document this phenomenon as they try to get to safety.
The Sagaing fault is a strike-slip fault—a fracture on the planet’s crust in which the two blocks slide past one another—that stretches about 745 miles and crosses Myanmar from north to south. The earthquake caused a rupture that extended over 310 miles of the fault and prompted a displacement of about 13 feet between the two sides, damaging roads and railway lines. The extent of the rupture was confirmed via satellite images from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 program.
‘The Myanmar fault is the same type of strike-slip fault as that of San Andreas,” Yann Klinger, a seismologist at the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris, told Le Monde. According to USGS researcher Nadine Reitman, the earthquake caused one of the largest surface ruptures ever observed around the world.
The 7.7-magnitude earthquake that hit the Mandalay region of Myanmar on March 28 claimed over 5,000 lives. It was so strong that it was felt as far away as Bangkok, causing casualties there as well. Due to Myanmar’s geography, located where two tectonic plates meet, it is regularly hit by powerful earthquakes. In the last 30 years, at least 17 tremors with a 6+ magnitude have struck the country. Due to the current political climate in Myanmar, response efforts have sadly been hindered.
If you’d still like to help, take a look at Unicef’s Myanmar Earthquake Appeal website.
On March 28, 2025, a powerful 7.7-magnitude earthquake hit Myanmar.
In a world-first, a security camera captured the moment the ground was ruptured along the Sagaing fault line near the epicenter.
Wow! I’ve never seen anything like this
This CCTV footage captures the powerful M7.7 earthquake that struck Myanmar in March. You can clearly see the dramatic shift in the ground.
Absolutely surreal. pic.twitter.com/SXdvd4yB3c
— Volcaholic (@volcaholic1) May 11, 2025
Sources: Volcaholic on Twitter; Very rare video of the devastating earthquake in Myanmar: ground shifts along the fault; ‘The Myanmar fault is the same type of strike-slip fault as that of San Andreas’; Seismologists Share Early Analyses of Myanmar Earthquake; List of earthquakes in Myanmar
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