Hero father leaps across collapsing sky bridge to save family during earthquake Video \ Elephant
A 7.7-magnitude quake in Myanmar caused a Bangkok footbridge to collapse, prompting a dramatic rescue.
Kwon Young-jun leapt across the collapsing bridge to reach his wife and child.
A Chinese construction company faces scrutiny after a 30-storey Bangkok tower collapse killed at least 13.
Heart-stopping footage has captured the moment a desperate dad leapt across a collapsing footbridge 50 storeys in the sky when the massive 7.7 Myanmar quake rocked nearby Bangkok.
The video shows 36-year-old Korean emigre Kwon Young-jun making the leap on March26 when the tremor rocked the Park Origin Thonglor residential tower.
Young-jun was exercising in the gym on the 52nd floor and, knowing his wife and young child were at home on the 30th floor of a neighbouring block, he chose to brave the rapidly disintegrating walkway.
The walkway collapsed when the Myanmar earthquake was felt in Bangkok. Photo / X/Walanpeela
After making the jump, he found the other building had been evacuated and had to make his way more than 40 floors back to the ground, where he was reunited with his wife, known as Ms Bowyuri, and daughter.
“It’s very dangerous. When I saw the clip, I was shocked like everyone else,” Bowyuri wrote on social media.
“The events that day happened so fast. No one was at their most mindful ... Oppa just wanted to help the family ... When Oppa told the story, it wasn’t this scary because he didn’t turn around to look,” she added, referring to her husband using the Korean term for big brother.
His daredevil action was caught on video.
“At the time, I was just worried about my child, I had to go and take care of my wife and child,” Young-jun told local media.
“I just moved instinctively – ran, reacted, focused only on moving forward."
His wife said the incident was evidence she had chosen her husband wisely.
“I did not choose the wrong person,” she said.
A relieved Kwon Young-jun was reunited with his family at the bottom of the tower.
‘What happened?’
A Chinese construction company is facing questions over the deadly collapse of a Bangkok skyscraper – the only major building in the capital to fall in a catastrophic earthquake that has killed more than 2700 people in Thailand and neighbouring Myanmar.
The 30-storey tower, still under construction, was to house government offices, but the shaking reduced the structure to a pile of rubble in seconds, killing at least 13 people and injuring nine.
It was the deadliest single incident in Thailand after Friday’s 7.7-magnitude quake, with the majority of the kingdom’s 20 fatalities thought to be workers on the building site and hopes fading for around 70 still trapped.
Dramatic video from Bangkok showed a building under construction collapse after the city was rocked by an earthquake.
Sprawling Bangkok bristles with countless high-rise blocks, but none have reported major damage, prompting many to ask why the block under construction gave way.
“We have to investigate where the mistake happened,” said Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who has ordered a probe into the materials and safety standards at the construction site.
“What happened from the beginning since it was designed? How was this design approved? This was not the first building in the country,” she told reporters on Saturday.
The development near Bangkok’s popular Chatuchak market was a joint project involving China Railway No 10 Engineering Group (Thailand) – an offshoot of China Railway Group (CREC), one of the world’s largest construction and engineering contractors.
