Rescue workers saved a 63-year-old woman from the rubble of a building in Myanmar’s capital on Tuesday, but hope was fading of finding many more survivors of the violent earthquake that killed more than 2,700 people, compounding a humanitarian crisis caused by a civil war. The fire department in Naypyitaw said the woman was successfully pulled from the rubble 91 hours after being buried when the building collapsed in the 7.7 magnitude earthquake that hit midday Friday. Experts say the likelihood of finding survivors drops dramatically after 72 hours. Death toll numbers forecast to increase The head of Myanmar’s military government, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, told a forum for relief donations in Naypyitaw that 2,719 people have now been found dead, with 4,521 others injured and 441 missing, Myanmar’s state MRTV television reported. He said Friday’s earthquake was the second most powerful in the country’s recorded history after a magnitude 8 quake east of Mandalay in May 1912. The casualty figures are widely expected to rise. The earthquake hit a wide swath of the country, leaving many areas without power, telephone or cell connections and damaging roads and bridges, making the full extent of the devastation hard to assess. Most of the reports so far have come from Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, which was near the epicenter of the earthquake, and Naypyitaw, the capital. “The needs are massive, and they are rising by the hour,” said Julia Rees, UNICEF’s deputy representative for Myanmar. Myanmar’s fire department said 403 people have been rescued in Mandalay and 259 bodies have been found so far. In one incident, 50 Buddhist monks who were taking a religious exam in a monastery were killed when the building collapsed, and 150 more are thought to be buried in the rubble. Structural damage is extensive The World Health Organization said more than 10,000 buildings overall are known to have collapsed or been severely damaged by the quake. The earthquake also rocked neighboring Thailand, causing a high-rise building under construction to collapse and burying many workers. Two bodies were pulled from the rubble Monday and another was recovered Tuesday, but dozens were still missing. Overall, there were 21 people killed and 34 injured in Bangkok, primarily at the construction site. In Myanmar, search and rescue efforts across the affected area paused briefly at midday Tuesday as people stood for a minute in silent tribute to the dead. Relief efforts moving at a sluggish pace Foreign aid workers have been arriving slowly to help in the rescue efforts, but progress lagged due to a lack of heavy machinery in many places. In one site in Naypyitaw on Tuesday, workers formed a human chain, passing chunks of brick and concrete out hand-by-hand from the ruins of a collapsed building. The state Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported Tuesday that a team of Chinese rescuers saved four people the day before from the ruins of an apartment complex. They included a 5-year-old and a pregnant woman who had been trapped for more than 60 hours. It also reported that two teenagers were able to crawl out of the rubble of the same building using their cellphone flashlights to help guide them. Rescue workers were then able to use details from what they told them to locate their grandmother and sibling. International rescue teams from several countries are […]