Terrified residents rushed to the safety of higher ground and watched houses being crushed like tin cans and cars washed away.
Rescue teams are searching for the missing along hundreds of kilometers of coast.
They're combing through towns and villages that have been reduced to splinters.
Al Jazeera's Azhar Sukri reports.
မင္းကႏုနယ္ေပမဲ့အားသန္ပါတယ္ဂ်ပန္ေရ
ငါတို႕လဲမင္းတိုအတြက္ေန႕တိုင္းဆုေတာင္းေပးေနပါတယ္
အျမန္ဆုံးျပန္လည္က်န္းမာပါေစ