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OVERVIEW
On 28 March 2025, a magnitude-7.7 earthquake, followed by several aftershocks, struck Myanmar. The earthquake occurred at a depth of 10km, with its epicentre located approximately 16km northwest of Sagaing city and 19km northwest of Mandalay city, Myanmar’s secondlargest city. The hardest-hit states and regions were eastern Bago, Mandalay, Sagaing, and southern Shan. By 18 April, around 3,700 people had died, with more than 4,820 reported injured and almost 130 missing. It is estimated that more than 17.2 million people have been affected (AHA Centre 14/04/2025; ECHO 08/04/2025; OCHA 07/04/2025 a and 18/04/2025; UNICEF 04/04/2025). The earthquake has damaged homes, health facilities, roads, and bridges, displacing almost 200,000 people. It has also destroyed sanitation facilities and water infrastructure, disrupting access to safe drinking water and seeing people depend on spring water, surface water, or water bottle provision (ECHO 11/04/2025; AHA Centre 08/04/2025; STC 07/04/2025). The current hot season (February–May) is compounding the crisis, with temperatures soaring above 44° C (111° F). This creates severe conditions for affected communities with inadequate shelter and complicates response operations (STC 02/04/2025; IFRC 30/03/2025). The monsoon (May–October) and cyclone (April–May and October–November) seasons will likely aggravate the already challenging conditions (ACAPS accessed 09/04/2025; WB accessed 10/04/2025). Heavy rains were already reported from 5–6 April across parts of Mandalay and Sagaing regions, damaging makeshift shelters, affecting those sleeping in the open, and increasing the risk of disease outbreaks (UNICEF 07/04/2025). The estimated 17.2 million people living in affected areas, including over 9.1 million people living in the hardest-hit areas of Mandalay and Sagaing, are at heightened risk of exposure to heavy downpours and flooding, destructive winds, and extreme heat (OCHA 07/04/2025 a). Flooding and resultant pollution from drainage systems have been reported in temporary camps and settlements, heightening public health risks from poor sanitation, inadequate latrines, and increased exposure to diseases (OCHA 07/04/2025 b; Oxfam 06/04/2025). Globally, Myanmar is one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, which has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme precipitation events, cyclones, and heatwaves over the past decades. In the INFORM Climate Change Risk Index, Myanmar has a score of 6.2, which means it is highly vulnerable to climate change events and lacks adaptation and coping capacity (EC accessed 14/04/2025). Environmental degradation, such as deforestation resulting from the expansion of palm oil crop and rubber plantations, has further intensified the effects of these seasonal hazards, as ecosystem damage reduces natural buffers such as mangroves, forests, and wetlands that would otherwise mitigate flooding, storm surges, and heat stress (ND-GAIN accessed 10/04/2025; MIMU 05/2022). In 2024, Mandalay and Bago regions were among the states/regions most severely affected by flooding following Typhoon Yagi and monsoon rains (OCHA 07/04/2025 a). The map below illustrates population exposure to flooding in 2024 by township, highlighting that many earthquake-affected areas also experienced flooding that year. This aligns with flood risk data, which identifies several earthquake-affected townships in eastern and western Bago, eastern Magway, Mandalay, and Sagaing as being at risk or very high risk from flooding – particularly in the lower Ayeyarwady River basin (Wuit-Yee-Kyaw and Dudley 13/10/2020).