Footage from the Myanmar earthquake has unveiled the harrowing ordeal of individuals entrapped in the wreckage of a collapsed structure.

The video features two young girls aged 13 and 16, along with their injured grandmother, who found themselves amidst debris following Friday’s significant 7.7-magnitude earthquake.

They were caught in the rubble as they fled their sixth-floor apartment in the country’s second-largest city of Mandalay, near the earthquake’s epicenter, and were making their way to the emergency stairs.

The girls’ father initially believed his daughters and mother had perished and pleaded for help on social media to recover their bodies.

However, they were alive – and had seized their phones in the moments before the building collapse.

Writing on Facebook, he posted: “My daughters filmed videos on their phones, fearing if they and grandma perished, their phones might be found, and their parents would see them.

“They even unlocked their phones.”

He stated that his family could hear others trapped under them in the wreckage of the Sky Villa apartment block.

“They called to each other from above and below, but there was no sound from outside. As hours passed, they became despondent and held hands with grandma, crying,” he claimed.

Rescue teams eventually located them and passed water through a small hole made with a hammer, but had to leave to fetch more equipment.

Left alone for a while, the girls took initiative and used the hammer to create an escape gap.

“They aimed to enlarge the opening for grandma, but the large stones were too heavy, and both sisters couldn’t move them,” the man stated in his post.

‘Fighting for breath’

Rescuers returned and managed to extricate the girls.

Their 75-year-old grandmother was “struggling to breathe” and too large to fit through – but was also later rescued.

“I am deeply grateful to my mother and my two daughters for enduring this ordeal with such strong spirits,” the man wrote.

“These are the words my daughters relayed to me once their trauma had subsided.

“At a moment when all hope seemed lost, I bow my head in reverence and gratitude to the Lord Buddha for allowing our family to survive together.”

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More than 1,700 people are now reported to have died in Myanmar following the quake, according to state media on Sunday.

Eighteen were also killed in Thailand but dozens more remain unaccounted for. Hopes of people surviving in rubble dwindle after 72 hours.

The UN is hurrying aid supplies to survivors in Myanmar, but the rescue effort is complicated by the fact that many roads, bridges, rail lines, and airports have been damaged.

The country is also in the midst of an ongoing civil war that has severely impacted the health system and displaced over three million people.