Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Tremors felt in Singapore after Sumatra quake
Tremors were felt in various parts of Singapore after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia's Sumatra island on Monday afternoon.
Police said 53 buildings were affected, but engineers have checked and confirmed that they are structurally safe.
There were also no reports of injury.
Singaporeans felt the tremors at about 4pm. Many called the MediaCorp News hotline to report the tremors and some residents in Marine Crescent and Bukit Panjang sent video clips of objects shaking in their flats.
Those living in private residential buildings as well as workers in commercial buildings also felt the tremors.
In the commercial district, some people were evacuated. But they returned to work just 10 minutes later.
"(Felt the tremor) for a minute, but we didn't see many people (evacuating), so we thought it wasn't probably serious enough, so we went back upstairs," said an office worker.
"I felt this (tremor).....around 4, 5 seconds," said another office worker.
"Well, it was just shaking a little bit. We were in a meeting and we saw the curtains shaking a little bit but nothing major," said a third office worker.
For workers at a construction site in Robinson Road, they said they did not feel any shaking and work continued uninterrupted.
Some of them told Channel NewsAsia that piling works, rather than tremors, had been causing vibration.