When the earth started rocking beneath her home in Bangkok on Friday, Kanittha Thepasak thought she was simply dizzy. Then she heard an odd creaking sound, saw a lamp moving and threw aside a curtain to find cars swaying like boats at sea.

周五，当她位于曼谷的家开始摇晃时，卡妮塔·贴帕沙以为自己只是头晕。然后，她听到了奇怪的嘎吱声，看到一盏灯在晃动，掀开窗帘，她看见楼下的汽车像海上的船一样摇晃。

The streets were filled with people who had rushed outside, staring up at the apartment buildings, glass office towers and unfinished construction all around them. Now Ms. Kanittha can barely imagine returning to the office where she spends most of her days. It’s on the 29th floor.

街头挤满了匆忙跑到外面的人，他们抬头盯着周围的公寓楼、玻璃幕墙的写字楼以及尚未完工的建筑工地。现在，卡尼塔几乎无法想象再回到往日度过大部分时光的办公室了。那间办公室在29楼。

“I’m freaked out, I’m worried,” she said. “Thai people have no basic understanding of earthquakes because we never really experience them.”

“我吓坏了，很担心，”她说，“泰国人对地震基本没有什么了解，因为我们从来没有真正经历过地震。”

The quake that devastated Myanmar on Friday did far less damage in neighboring Thailand, but the sheer force of it — with a magnitude of 7.7 — emptied Bangkok, a city of towers, into the streets. On Sunday, two days later, as the Thai government and engineers inspected hundreds of damaged structures to ensure they could be occupied, it was still darkening thoughts of routines that increasingly include living and working dozens of stories above ground.

周五重创缅甸的地震在邻国泰国造成的破坏要小得多，但在曼谷这座高楼林立的城市里，这场7.7级地震的巨大威力还是人们纷纷跑到街头。两天后的周日，泰国政府和工程师检查了数百栋受损建筑，以确保它们的安全，但人们仍然心有余悸，毕竟越来越多的人平日都是在几十层楼高的地方生活和工作。

The disaster’s most devastating scene in Thailand came from the complete collapse of a Bangkok building that had been under construction. At least 11 workers were reported dead as of Sunday, and with about 75 still unaccounted for, rescue crews continued to pull carefully at the rubble with a dozen excavators and eight dogs trained to find the dead and the living.

在泰国，这场灾难最惨烈的场景是曼谷一座在建大楼的完全坍塌。据报道，截至周日，至少有11名工人死亡，约75人下落不明，救援人员继续用十几台挖掘机和八只经过训练的搜救犬，小心翼翼地在废墟中寻找幸存者。

Andy Redmond, a member of the K9 team, said all the signals on Sunday pointed to cadavers, with a scent so overwhelming that the dogs struggled to locate individual remains.

搜救犬小组成员安迪·雷德蒙德说，周日根据嗅探到的所有迹象最终找到的都是尸体，气味浓烈得让搜救犬难以确定遗体的具体位置。

“It’s a learning curve,” he said, resting between search missions that had kept him at the site since Friday afternoon. “You can’t train for this.”

“有一个学习的过程，”他说。自从周五下午以来，他一直在现场执行搜索任务，此时正稍作休息，“这种情况是无法事先训练的。”

Video of the building’s dramatic fall seems etched in the minds of many, altering how residents see their city. For about a decade, Bangkok has been on the move, upward and outward, with a construction boom fueled by the expansion of its subway and Skytrain.

那座大楼轰然倒塌的视频似乎深深烙在了许多人的脑海中，改变了居民对这座城市的看法。大约十年来，曼谷不断发展，城市向上延伸、向外扩张，地铁和轻轨系统的扩大推动了建筑热潮。

But now, with at least a dozen cranes hovering over the skyline, gray skeletons of steel and concrete that once signaled economic growth have taken on an ominous quality.

但现在，天际线上的至少十几座塔吊盘、曾经标志着经济增长的灰色钢筋水泥骨架都有了一种不祥的意味。

Somreutal Nilbanjong, 34, found herself gazing at one such building downtown on Sunday afternoon as she walked home. Asked what she was thinking, she said, “It scares me just to look at it.”

周日下午走在回家的路上时，34岁的颂勒达·尼班宗发现自己正盯着市中心一栋这样的建筑。当被问到她在想什么时，她说：“光是看着它就让我害怕。”

A small construction elevator climbed up the exterior through pink scaffolding. She scrolled through her phone until she found a photo of the mountain of rubble a few miles away — the collapsed building, Bangkok’s ground zero.

一部小型施工电梯沿着粉色的脚手架在建筑的外立面缓缓上升。她滑动手机，找到了一张几英里外那堆废墟的照片——那座倒塌的大楼，曼谷这场灾难的中心。

Goose bumps appeared on her arms, and she shuddered.

她手臂上起了鸡皮疙瘩，禁不住发抖。

“I’m afraid it’s going to happen again,” she said.

“我担心这样的事情还会再次发生，”她说。

从空中俯瞰坍塌的大楼。

Government officials have tried to calm people’s nerves and keep people updated.

政府官员试图安抚人们的情绪，并及时向他们通报最新情况。

Immediately after Friday’s quake, Thailand’s prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, issued an urgent alert warning people to be wary of aftershocks for the next 24 hours.

周五地震发生后，泰国总理佩通坦·钦那瓦立即发布了紧急警报，提醒民众在接下来的24小时内警惕余震。

By that evening, she sought to reassure the public by announcing that the situation had stabilized and that residents could return to their homes.

到了那天晚上，她试图安抚公众，宣布情况已经稳定下来，民众可以返回家中。

On Saturday, she rode on Bangkok’s elevated railway, known as the Skytrain, to show that the trains were safe. The system had been shut down after the quake and inspected before most of the lines were reopened.

周六，她乘坐了曼谷的轻轨，以此表明该系统的安全性。地震后，轻轨系统一度关闭，大部分线路重新开放之前都进行了安全检查。

But even as the city has re-emerged toward normalcy — malls and markets full, trains rumbling over streets packed with motorbikes — many people are struggling to process something they had thought happened only in other places, like Japan or Taiwan.

但是，即使这座城市已经恢复正常——商场和市场里人满为患，轻轨在挤满摩托车的街头隆隆驶过——许多人仍在努力消化他们原本以为只会发生在其他地方（比如日本或台湾）的事情。

Ms. Kanittha said the experience was so confounding that her mind raced to memories of what she had seen in Japanese comics or manga depicting disasters.

卡妮塔说，这次经历让她感到十分困惑，她的脑海中不断浮现出在日本漫画中看到的描绘灾难的场景。

Many people said they weren’t necessarily scared, but that they were forced to ask unexpected questions: Behind glass facades, are buildings really secure? What if there are cracks that cannot be seen? What if there’s a giant aftershock?

许多人说，他们倒不一定是害怕，但他们不得不提出一些意想不到的问题：那些玻璃幕墙建筑真的安全吗？如果有看不见的裂缝怎么办？如果发生巨大的余震怎么办？

Jiraporn Jaichob, 41, a drink stall owner who was having lunch when the temblor struck, said she was making plans for future disasters.

地震发生时，41岁的饮料摊主吉拉蓬·猜乔布正在吃午饭，她说自己正在为未来可能发生的灾难做准备。

She was thinking of buying a transistor radio since she’d seen cellphone coverage go down. She also created a go bag for family with key documents and supplies.

她考虑买一台晶体管收音机，因为她已经看到手机信号曾中断。她还为家人准备了一个应急包，里面装着重要的文件和用品。

“With this earthquake we learned that we don’t know what might happen in a given day,” she said.

“这次地震让我们明白，不知道哪天会发生什么，”她说。

“We can die anytime, anywhere, I know, it’s our fate,” she added. “But at least we take care of our lives where we can.”

“我们随时随地都可能死去，我知道，这是我们的命运，”她补充道。“但至少，我们在力所能及的范围内，要保护好自己的生命。

曼谷一座连接两栋高层公寓楼的连廊受损。

Thailand upgraded its earthquake-resistant building code in 2007, and experts said the vast majority of the city’s buildings were clearly strong enough to withstand what should still be considered a rare seismic event. Still, some engineers called for greater scrutiny and a potential upgrade in standards and enforcement.

泰国在2007年升级了建筑的抗震标准，专家表示，曼谷的绝大多数建筑显然都足够坚固，可以抵御被视为罕见的地震事件。不过，一些工程师呼吁加强审查，并考虑提升标准以及监管的执行力度。

“Look at Japan — they keep developing their laws and design,” said Suchatvee Suwansawat, a professor of civil engineering at King Mongkut University and a former president of the Council of Engineers Thailand. “We should do that as well.”

“看看日本——他们一直在法律和设计层面进行完善，”先皇理工大学的土木工程教授、泰国工程师协会前会长素差威·素万萨瓦说。“我们也应该这样做。”

The collapse of the 30-story building, which had been going up beside a mall and popular weekend market, could be a turning point. It never should have buckled, said Dr. Suchatvee, suggesting that something went wrong in design, execution or oversight.

那栋30层大楼的倒塌可能会成为一个转折点。这座建在一个商场和颇受欢迎的周末市场旁的大楼本不应该坍塌，素万萨瓦说，这表明在设计、施工或监管方面出了问题。

Four years into construction, it was being built by a Chinese state-owned company, the China Railway 10th Engineering Group. The Thai government has promised to investigate and report early findings in a week.

这座大楼已经施工了四年，承建方是中国的一家国有企业——中铁十局集团。泰国政府已承诺进行调查，并在一周内公布初步调查结果。

But like other frightening building collapses — the condo tower in Surfside, Fla., which killed 98 people in 2021; or the downing of the World Trade Center from terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 — the toll of destruction seems likely to linger.

但就像其他可怕的建筑倒塌事件一样——比如2021年造成98人死亡的佛罗里达州瑟夫赛德的公寓楼倒塌，以及2001年9月11日世贸中心因恐怖袭击倒塌——这种灾难的影响似乎会持续很久。

By dusk Sunday, shock, grief and dust mingled in the air at the collapse site, where a sizable crowd was gathered. Volunteer rescuers from the police and the military wearing jumpsuits cycled in and out of the area. At one point, a crane held two observers over the top of the rubble mountain as men in yellow hats stared up from below.

周日黄昏时分，坍塌现场聚集了很多人，空气中弥漫着震惊、悲痛和灰尘。身着连体服的警方和军队志愿救援人员进进出出。一台起重机一度将两名观察员吊到了瓦砾堆的顶部，下面戴着黄帽子的人们抬头看着他们。

在曼谷那栋建筑物的坍塌现场，民众正在等待搜救行动的消息。

At the perimeter, the father of a Pakistani worker told reporters people were praying at temples all over Thailand, and that he hoped at least half the workers would come out alive.

在现场外围，一名巴基斯坦工人的父亲告诉记者，全泰国的寺庙都有人祈祷，他希望至少有一半的工人能活着出来。

Aubonrat Setnawet was also still hoping for good news about her husband. He had been on the 23rd floor of the building when the earthquake hit; she had been there too, working, but on the ground floor, not far from where she sat on Sunday in a soft plastic chair near a hard metal fence.

奥汶叻·塞特那韦期待关于她丈夫的好消息。地震发生时，他在大楼的23层；她也在那里工作，不过是在一楼，距离周日当时她坐着的那张金属栅栏附近的塑料软椅不远。

“No updates,” she said quietly. All she could point to were more relatives beside her, as the noisy grind of diggers and dump trucks filled the air.

“没有新消息，”她轻声说道。亲属纷纷赶来陪伴她，四周传来挖掘机和翻斗卡车的嘈杂轰鸣声，此外一切如旧。

At the market across the street, Jatupol Sawangphanich, 42, put tape over the slits of a metal grate protecting his tropical fish business.

在街对面的市场，42岁的差图蓬·沙旺帕尼奇给金属架子的缝隙贴上胶带，以保护他的热带鱼生意。

“Every time they lift the rubble, the dust flies in this direction,” he said.

“每次他们掀开瓦砾，灰尘都会朝这个方向飞过来，”他说。

Beside him, the lights of a usually busy mall had gone dark. Its structural integrity still needed to be tested.

在他旁边，平日里热闹的商场灯光全无。商场建筑的结构稳固性仍有待勘查。

“This happened all over Bangkok,” he said. “I’d rather not go into tall buildings at all.”

“曼谷到处都有这种状况，”他说。“我根本就不想再进高楼大厦了。”