The two were reportedly killed when strong winds caused a building owned by a jade-mining company to collapse.

A storm that swept through Kachin State’s Hpakant Township on Thursday night caused extensive damage to property and claimed the lives of at least two people, according to the Hpakant-based Green Land environmental conservation group.

The group said that two people working for the Linn Let Win jade company were killed when a building collapsed on them at around 8pm on Thursday.

“There was a lot of damage, especially in Lonkhin village-tract and Maw-one village. I heard that two people died in Maw-one when a building owned by the company fell on them,” Green Land’s leader, Ying Hkaw, told KNG.

According to Ying Hkaw, a concrete Kachin traditional Manau post in Maw-one village also fell to the ground in the storm.



Further damage was reported in Hpakant Township’s Maw-see-sa ward, where a number of makeshift structures used to house day laborers were blown away.

“The storm did not hit us as hard as other areas, but the wind was strong enough to knock down at least 10 huts used by daily-wage workers,” Maw-see-sa’s village administrator Thein Zaw told KNG.

As of Friday night, no survey of the damage had been conducted by Hpakant Township administrators. However, Thein Zaw said that local village officials had reported damages to the relevant township authorities.