An American who was on a subway train in Bangkok when the earthquake struck recounted being stranded as transportation in the city ground to a halt.
When her train stopped, Sid Simone said she went on Facebook to find out what was going on.
“I saw ‘earthquake in Bangkok,’ and so at that point, I knew that the entire city was going to start to diminish,” the Michigan native told ABC Grand Rapids affiliate WZZM in an interview earlier Friday. “I have been trying to get home for five hours now.”
American Sid Simone speaks with WZZM from Bangkok following the earthquake, March 28, 2025.
WZZM
With no train service, Simone, who is in Bangkok to make a documentary on vegan food, said she got into a taxi but abandoned it when traffic came to a standstill and the vehicle was low on gas.
WZZM spoke to her as she was walking along a highway, still about an hour from home.
“It’s unfortunate because there’s so many people that, we’re all fighting trying to get home, but some people are trying to fight to get home because their family member is under that building, you know. Somebody didn’t make it home,” she told WZZM.
She told the station that her apartment complex was just down the street from where the under-construction high-rise collapsed.
“I was so blessed that I was not there today,” she said. “I could have been shopping in that area.”
Rescue workers search for survivors at the site of a collapsed building following an earthquake in Bangkok, Thailand, Mar. 28, 2025.
Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters
