Tremors felt in various parts of Singapore
Published on Apr 12, 2012
People waiting outside Albert Complex near Rochor Road after evacuating the building. The police and SCDF received 38
calls reporting the tremors. -- ST PHOTO: LAU FOOK KONG
By Elizabeth Soh
Singaporeans felt the floor move beneath their feet on Wednesday as aftershocks from an 8.6-magnitude
earthquake off Indonesia shook high-rise buildings and homes near the coast.
Tremors lasting two to three minutes each were reported at around 5pm by people across the island, from
residents in Ang Mo Kio, Toa Payoh, Serangoon North and Geylang Bahru to office workers in the Central
Business District.
The Meteorological Service on Wednesday confirmed that an earthquake struck Northern Sumatra at
4.38pm, about 1,240km away from Singapore.
B ACKGROUND STORY
Residents in Woodlands, Bendemeer, Punggol and Hougang described swaying floors and furniture. Executive Iris Yee, 55,
who works in the Whampoa area, said the tremors were so bad she felt like throwing up. 'I felt like I was spinning.'
Mr Bernie Chew evacuated his employees on the 10th floor of Capitol Building in North Bridge Road
when he felt the floor move.
'It started with a swaying and then stopped and started again, like the feeling you get when you feel dizzy,'
the businessman, who is in his 30s, said. 'I've experienced earthquakes before but I didn't believe that I
would feel it in Singapore.'
About 30 people evacuated The Bencoolen building in Bugis Street after feeling the tremors. 'At first we
were wondering what was happening,' said auditor Hemavathi Panneerselvam, 24, who works on the ninth
floor.
He added: 'It's my first time experiencing tremors. I could feel myself moving, but it wasn't so scary
because they were light.'
The management of the 16-storey Capital Square building in Telok Ayer Street broadcast a message telling
tenants not to worry.
Marine Parade residents felt the strongest tremors, but most did not get too anxious as it was not the first
time they had experienced them.
'I was on the computer working when I saw my curtains swaying and felt the tremors,' said home tutor
Susan Lim, 53, who lives on the 24th floor of a condominium near East Coast beach. 'I was not scared as I
have experienced this a few times before.'
Others in Woodlands, Bendemeer, Punggol and Hougang also described swaying floors and furniture.
Executive Iris Yee, 55, who works in the Whampoa area, said the tremors were so bad she felt like
throwing up. 'I felt like I was spinning,' she said.
Housewife Geraldine Yap, 32, was taking a nap in her 14th-floor flat in Punggol when the tremors hit. 'I
thought that I was suffering from a vertigo attack as I was lying down but the room seemed to be swaying
from left to right. My kids were really scared and started crying.'
Earth Observatory of Singapore director Kerry Sieh said that although the quake could turn out to be one
of the biggest in 40 years, Singaporeans had no cause for worry as the distance between Sumatra and
Singapore is too great for the quake to have any impact on structures here.
'It is highly unlikely that there will be any damage here,' he said.
The National Environment Agency has a tsunami early warning system and it said it will issue a public
advisory if there is a risk of Singapore being affected.
'Given our location, Singapore and its surrounding islands are unlikely to be affected by any tsunami
generated by this earthquake,' said a spokesman.
The police and Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) received 38 calls reporting the tremors.
They advised the public to stay calm and take cover. There were no reports of injury.
The Building and Construction Authority and the Housing Board inspected 30 buildings in the affected
areas, and found them to be structurally safe.
In 2007, a 6.7-magnitude earthquake hit Sumatra, causing tremors that were felt in the East Coast area, Toa
Payoh and the Central Business District.
People in the region evacuate for their safety
Published on Apr 12, 2012
Foreign tourists, evacuated following a tsunami warning, waiting at Phuket's international airport on Wednesday. The airport
was closed for several hours before it reopened after the tsunami alert was lifted. The popular holiday destination in Thailand
was devastated by the killer tsunami of 2004. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The earthquake off Sumatra reverberated round the world. The Straits Times takes a look at some of the
countries affected.
 MALAYSIA: In Kuala Lumpur, people left buildings as the tremors struck.
Hotels along Batu Ferringhi beach in Penang were put on alert and guests were advised to stay away from
the beach.
RELATED LI NKS
ALERT AROUND THE REGION
Some shop owners closed early, in anticipation of a tsunami. The tsunami warning was later lifted.
Ferry services between the mainland and the island were not affected.
In Kota Kuala Muda, the settlement worst hit by the tsunami in 2004, most of the 1,000 residents from five
villages vacated their homes of their own accord and assembled at a multi-purpose hall nearby.
Social media was abuzz with Twitter alerts from the authorities and citizens warning about a possible
tsunami.
 THAILAND: The country brimming with tourists gathered for the upcoming water festival Songkran also felt tremors.
Australian tourist Bonnie Muddle vacationing in Phuket said people were evacuated from popular tourist
areas, including Krabi and Phang Nga bay.
'All the local villagers are up on the hill,' she told Agence France-Presse (AFP). 'Some boats have just left
the dock and are anchoring out (which is) supposedly safer.'
Phuket International Airport was closed following the tsunami alert but has since reopened.
Two SilkAir flights were affected by the brief airport shutdown. One turned back to Singapore after takeoff, while another was cancelled.
 MYANMAR: The authorities issued a tsunami warning two hours after the quake struck off Sumatra. But it was lifted at
7pm local time, as the tsunami was not high enough to affect the country's coastal areas as predicted earlier, according to
state media.
The Meteorology and Hydrology Department had asked people living in low-lying coastal areas to move to
higher land. The areas expected to be affected by a possible tsunami were Cheduba Island, Pyin Kayaing,
Sittway, Magway and Yangon.
The quake was felt in cities such as Mandalay, Sittway, Kyaukphyu, Laputta, Chaungtha, Bogalay, Maubin
and Pyapon. People living in high-rise buildings were seen rushing down to the streets, Xinhua reported.
 INDIA: Tremors were felt in several cities, including Kolkata in the east, Chennai and Bangalore in the south. The
authorities issued a brief tsunami alert which was later cancelled.
Cracks appeared in several buildings in Kolkata and people were seen rushing out of offices in the city's
central Park Street.
Subway passengers were evacuated from stations and rail operations were suspended. Services resumed by
late afternoon on Wednesday. Chennai Port suspended operations following the tremors.
Ms Sajeda Momin, an editor with newspaper Bengal Post, said she and her colleagues rushed out of their
10-storey building twice between 2pm and 4.30pm local time following strong tremors.
'We had a bad time,' she said. 'There were two aftershocks, with the second one lasting about 30 to 40
seconds; everything was shaking in the office. We had to rush to the ground from the eighth floor.'
In the high-tech hub of Bangalore, mild tremors lasting about 10 to 15 seconds were felt, causing
widespread panic.
In the Andaman and Nicobar islands, 1,600km from the Indian mainland, several hundred people were
asked to leave their homes.
'All the administration officials have been asked to move out from the region. This is not an evacuation but
just a precautionary step,' the islands' chief secretary Shakti Sinha told AFP.
The islands were badly hit by the 2004 tsunami, which destroyed homes, schools and hospitals and left
more than 450 people dead and thousands missing.
 SRI LANKA: In the capital Colombo, nervous crowds gathered on the streets after the strong quake. Thousands of people
rushed out of their office buildings and stayed on the pavement.
The Ceylon Electricity Board disconnected power to all coastal areas to prevent fires and other disasters.
Railway services to coastal areas were also stopped to prevent any casualties.
'I was on the seventh floor of my office building when we felt them... Everyone rushed out of the building,'
said office executive Chaminda Amerasinghe.
 MALDIVES: Tourists at several upmarket beach resorts in the Maldives were handed life jackets and advised to stay
away from the beach following the brief tsunami alert.
At the luxury Hilton Iru Fushi resort, more than 400 guests were told to evacuate the beach as news of the
possible tsunami spread, AFP reported.
'We asked all our guests to gather at a building in the centre of the island,' a resort spokesman said by
telephone. 'We also gave them life jackets as a precaution.'
At the Taj Exotica resort, some 160 holidaymakers had assembled at a designated evacuation centre and
were given life jackets until the tsunami alert was lifted.
At least 125 locals and tourists were killed in the Maldives, a nation of 1,192 tiny coral islands, in the Dec
26, 2004 tsunami.
 AFRICA: Kenya and Tanzania issued tsunami warnings along their eastern Indian Ocean coastlines following the quake.
'The government of Kenya has issued a tsunami warning for the people living along the Kenyan coastline,'
Ms Esther Murugi, the minister of state for special programmes, said in a statement, adding that water
levels were expected to rise to 2m to 3m in some areas. The alert has since been lifted.
One person in Kenya was killed in the 2004 tsunami.
Tanzania said it expected waves of up to 1.5m to hit the coastline between midnight and 2am today
Singapore time.
'There will likely be huge waves in the Indian Ocean. All fishermen and other vessels should keep off the
sea,' Tanzania's Meteorological Agency director Agness Kijazi told Reuters.
One hundred and sixty-four people were killed and more than 2,300 others displaced in Kenya, Tanzania,
Madagascar, Seychelles, and Somalia after the 2004 tsunami.
Indonesian residents scramble for higher
ground
Hundreds head for airport as quake triggers memories of 2004 tsunami
Published on Apr 12, 2012
Acehnese running for safety shortly after the earthquake struck on Wednesday. But initial fears of a tsunami proved
unfounded. Tsunami alerts gave way to all-clear announcements in most countries. The resulting tsunami detected in
Meulaboh was less than a metre high. -- PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
By Wahyudi Soeriaatmadja & Zakir Hussain, Indonesia Correspondents
JAKARTA: Memories of the massive tsunami that wiped out much of his hometown eight years ago
flashed through the mind of driver Benny Nur on Wednesday afternoon.
Tremors from an undersea 8.6-magnitude earthquake rocked Banda Aceh at 3.38pm and lasted several
minutes.
Mr Benny, 43, was resting at home with his wife and five-year-old son at the time, and decided to stay put
in his fifth-storey flat, built to withstand earthquakes after the 2004 tsunami, out of fear that they might be
washed away if another tsunami were to strike.
RELATED LI NKS
MASSIVE QUAKE
Eight years ago, he and his wife saw waves rush into their home near the coast.
Before long, they were chest-deep in water. Their two daughters - just three and eight years old - were
swept away. Their bodies have never been found.
When the waters cleared, the streets were filled with people in distress, searching for their loved ones.
'We'll never forget what happened that day. We actually thought it was Judgment Day,' he told The Straits
Times over the phone. 'Life and death are in the hands of God, but I was so worried something like that
would repeat itself.'
While Mr Benny and his neighbours looked out at sea from their flats on Wednesday, many others who
lived on lower ground packed the usually quiet streets of the provincial capital minutes after the first
tremors hit.
Residents scrambled for their cars and motorcycles to drive to higher ground inland, fearful that another
tsunami would inundate the town.
Hundreds headed for the Sultan Iskandar Muda international airport on the outskirts of the city.
Residents quickly crowded roads and pavements and chatted in other parts of the capital and in towns and
cities across Sumatra, from Medan to Padang and Bengkulu. As sirens blared, imams at mosques also
repeated the call to prayer.
Other residents rushed to the Baiturrahman Grand Mosque in the centre of town, which during the 2004
tsunami was the only building that stood steady while raging waters engulfed shops and houses
surrounding it.
Electricity in parts of Banda Aceh was down and phone lines across Sumatra were jammed as people
called families and friends for updates, prompting Communication and Information Minister Tifatul
Sembiring to ask people to keep phone calls short and not alarm others.
At a press conference in Jakarta with visiting British prime minister David Cameron, who readily offered
his country's help, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said: 'There is no tsunami threat although we are
on alert.'
He added: 'The situation in Aceh is under control; there's a little bit of panic but people can go to higher
ground.'
But just as the authorities lifted the tsunami warning for the first quake, a second earthquake measuring 8.2
struck at 5.43pm, followed by several aftershocks.
Anxious residents in the coastal areas of Meulaboh and Simeulue island fled inland, only to return to their
homes for the night as a tsunami warning was lifted at around 8pm.
In Padang, the capital of West Sumatra, search and rescue workers were put on immediate standby
following the first quake. Memories of the 2009 quake that killed some 1,300 residents, many from
collapsed buildings, were still strong.
Mr Joni Sitorus, head of Padang's search and rescue agency, immediately got things going.
'We are in full alert and ready to move any time we get calls,' he told The Straits Times several hours after
the quake. 'We put out our driller, life detector, wall crusher, steel cutter, excavators.'
All the agency's 110 personnel were put on standby, while about a dozen were dispatched to areas around
Padang to help do checks.
'I felt the tremors although I was on the ground floor,' he said. 'There was nothing serious, not even an item
falling off our desks. But we stand ready just in case.'
Early warning system around Indian Ocean
comes up to scratch
Published on Apr 12, 2012
An officer from the disaster management committee in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on a loudhailer urging people living near the
sea to leave their houses after the government sent out a tsunami warning on Wednesday. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
When the Indian Ocean tsunami struck in 2004, the only warning most people in the region had was the
sight of a giant wave heading towards them.
This time, however, most of the 27 nations bordering the ocean were better prepared.
An early warning system put in place in most countries in the region was quick to transmit information to
alert the authorities to a possible tsunami, its duration and its magnitude.
Within minutes of Wednesday's 8.6-magnitude earthquake off Indonesia's Banda Aceh in Sumatra, most of
the nations had issued warnings urging people to move to safety away from coastlines, before later
cancelling them.
Thailand's National Disaster Warning Centre, India's Tsunami Warning Centre and Malaysia's
Meteorological Department were quick to take action after Indonesia issued the first warning.
Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Reunion Islands, Kenya, Madagascar and Tanzania soon followed suit.
'The early warning system is working well' and there were no reports of casualties or damage in Aceh and
elsewhere, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said in Jakarta.
Besides commencing evacuations along the coasts, the authorities in some countries closed ports,
suspended train services and cordoned off beaches. Emergency services such as rescue teams and hospitals
were put on high alert while constant monitoring of the situation carried on for the next two hours.
Loudspeakers, sirens, SMSes and radio and TV announcements were used to warn residents to remain alert
and move to higher ground.
The warnings evoked painful memories of the Dec 26, 2004 tsunami, also caused by an undersea
earthquake off Indonesia that killed around 230,000 people along coastal regions.
But they also brought into focus the usefulness of early warning systems which were put in place within
two to three years of that Boxing Day tsunami by most countries scarred by the tragedy.
Most systems have pressure sensors in place on the sea floor which measure the weight of the water above
it. The weight varies according to wave height - and the findings are sent to a buoy on the surface,
seismologist Kerry Sieh, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, told The Straits Times.
These buoys then transmit data to satellites which in turn send the information to official laboratories. 'The
whole pro-cess takes 20 minutes at the most,' Professor Sieh said.
A number of buoys already in place in the Indian Ocean sent data to various laboratories after Wednesday's
quake.
The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) said communication systems set up after the 2004
tsunami appeared to have worked well.
'Our records indicate that all the national meteorological services in the countries at risk by this tsunami
have received the warnings in under five minutes,' said Dr Maryam Golnaraghi, the head of WMO's
disaster risk reduction programme, Associated Press reported.
Such systems can be very useful in averting major disasters in future, said Dr Mohammad Ismail H, who
runs a voluntary Integrated Tsunami Watcher Service site in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
On Wednesday, his volunteers received hundreds of text messages and phone calls inquiring about the
tsunami.
'This is one of the most important services for the future,' he said.
Why there was no tsunami this time
Published on Apr 12, 2012
Residents of the remote Simeuleu island near Aceh observe the sea level in their bay on April 11, 2012, after a powerful
earthquake hit the western coast of Sumatra in Aceh province on April 11, 2012. -- PHOTO: AFP
BANDA ACEH (Indonesia): No deadly waves or serious damage resulted from the two massive
earthquakes off Indonesia on Wednesday despite tsunami warnings and instant alerts for evacuation.
Experts said the quakes of magnitude 8.6 and 8.2 did not have the potential to create gigantic waves as the
friction between the Earth's tectonic plates occurred horizontally, which does not displace the seabed. This
means that the chances of a tsunami were low.
Indonesia's 18,000 islands are prone to temblors because the nation sits along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a
zone of active volcanoes and tectonic faults.
In Wednesday's quake, the plates slid against each other, creating more of a vibration in the water and
causing waves to rise up to 0.6m in places like Sabang and Meulaboh districts in Aceh. In contrast, megathrust quakes, like the one in Japan last year, cause the seabed to rise or drop vertically, displacing massive
amounts of water and sending towering waves racing across the ocean at jetliner speeds.
Seismologist Roger Musson from the British Geological Survey, who has studied Sumatra's fault lines,
said that initially, he had been 'fearing the worst'. 'But as soon as I discovered what type of earthquake it
was... I felt a lot better.'
Also, Wednesday's quake was about 10 times less energetic than the one that caused the 2004 Indian
Ocean tsunami, said volcanologist and planetary scientist David Rothery, from The Open University in
Britain, in a statement.
It was deeper too - 33km compared to 30km in 2004. That wave killed more than 230,000 people in
countries bordering the Indian Ocean.
This time too, the quake was felt from as far away as Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. People in buildings in
the eastern Indian city of Kolkata and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia also experienced the tremors.
Some buildings in Singapore shook too, despite being hundreds of kilometres away from the epicentre.
Experts have attributed this to the type of soil that makes up about a quarter of Singapore's land mass.
Buildings which stand on marine clay and some reclaimed land are a cause of worry, they were quoted as
saying.
'Odd duck' Indonesia quake surprises
scientists
Published on Apr 12, 2012


LOS ANGELES (AP) - The massive earthquake off Indonesia surprised scientists: Usually this type of jolt
isn't this powerful.
The biggest earthquakes tend to occur in subduction zones where one plate of the Earth's crust dives under
another.
This grind produced the 2004 magnitude-9.1 Indian Ocean disaster and the magnitude-9 Japan quake last
year.
Wednesday's magnitude-8.6 occurred along a strike-slip fault line similar to California's San Andreas Fault.
Scientists say it's rare for strike-slip quakes, in which blocks of rocks slide horizontally past each other, to
be this large.
'It's clearly a bit of an odd duck,' said seismologist Susan Hough of the United States Geological Survey in
Pasadena, Calif.
As one of the world's most seismically active places, Indonesia is located on the Pacific 'Ring of Fire', an
arc of volcanos and fault lines encircling the Pacific Basin. Pressure builds up in the rocks over time and is
eventually released in an earthquake.
Wednesday's quake was followed by a magnitude-8.2 aftershock. Both were strike-slip quakes.
'A week ago, we wouldn't have thought we could have a strike-slip earthquake of this size. This is very,
very large,' said Mr Kevin Furlong, a professor of geosciences at Penn State University.
So large, in fact, that the main shock went into the history books.
Record-keeping by the USGS National Earthquake Information Centre ranks Wednesday's shaker as the
11th largest since 1900.
It's probably the largest strike-slip event though there's debate about whether a similar-sized Tibet quake in
1950 was the same kind.
A preliminary analysis indicates one side of the fault lurched 21m past the other - a major reason for the
quake's size.
By contrast, during the 1906 magnitude-7.8 San Francisco earthquake along the San Andreas - perhaps the
best known strike-slip event - the ground shifted 4.6m.
The Sumatra coast has been rattled by three strong strike-slip quakes since 2004, but Wednesday's was the
largest.
Kenya cancels tsunami alert for coastal areas
Published on Apr 12, 2012
NAIROBI (AFP) - Kenya cancelled a tsunami alert on Wednesday after the feared dangers following a
powerful earthquake and aftershock off the coast of Sumatra were deemed to have eased.
Authorities had warned people living on the coastal regions not to take to the sea and ordered schools in
the area closed.
'The tsunami threat issued earlier has diminished. Therefore the tsunami alert issued earlier by this
department is now cancelled,' the meteorological department said in a statement.
'However, since the arrival time of the wave was expected to coincide with high tides at our coastline,
danger to boats and other small vessels will continue for several hours due to rapid currents,' it added.
The 8.6-magnitude earthquake was followed by a massive aftershock, measuring 8.2, off the Indonesian
island had raised a new tsunami threat.
Experts with the United States Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii, told AFP the first tsunami on
Wednesday was 'not anywhere near' as large as the devastating waves that struck Asia in 2004 and Japan
last year.
Strong 7.0-magnitude quake strikes western
Mexico
Published on Apr 12, 2012
People begin returning to a building that was evacuated after an earthquake was felt in Mexico City, Mexico, Wednesday,
April 11, 2012. -- PHOTO: AP
MEXICO CITY (AFP) - A strong 7.0-magnitude earthquake shook western Mexico on Wednesday, the
United States Geological Survey (USGS) said, with no immediate casualties reported as workers rushed
onto the streets of Mexico City.
The temblor struck at 2255 GMT (6.55am Singapore time), with the epicentre located around 69km from
the Pacific port of Lazaro Cardenas, in Michoacan state, the USGS reported.
Mexico's seismological service reported no immediate victims or damages and Mexico City mayor
Marcelo Ebrard said on his Twitter account that an initial survey of the capital registered no 'major
damage.'
The international airport and communication networks were operating, he wrote, though cell phone
networks were blocked as usually occurs after quakes here.
The quake followed a series of recent temblors in the region.
A powerful 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck south-west Mexico on March 20, killing two people, injuring
13 others and damaging thousands of homes.
Several hundred aftershocks have rocked southwestern and central Mexico since then, including a 6.3magnitude quake on April 2.
People in Mexico's crowded capital - with more than 20 million in the metro area - are all too familiar with
seismic activity and used to evacuation drills.