wild places | wild happenings | wild news
make a difference for our wild places

home | links | search the site
  all articles latest | past | articles by topics | search wildnews
wild news on wildsingapore
  Today Online 19 Dec 06
Quake tremors felt in central, northeastern areas of Singapore
Ansley Ng

Singaporeans living in many parts of the island woke up yesterday morning to tremors following two earthquakes off the coast of Sumatra within a half-hour span.

Tremors were felt in areas such as Marine Parade, Beach Road, Whampoa, Ang Mo Kio and Toa Payoh. Singapore police said it received 15 calls from the public after 5.45am. Seventeen buildings — including nine Housing Development Board blocks, six private residential buildings and two office buildings — in the central and northeast parts of Singapore experienced the tremors, police said.

Engineers from the HDB and the Building and Construction Authority inspected the buildings and found none was affected by the tremors. The public should report any cracks resulting from the tremors, the police added.

The first quake, measuring 5.8 on the Richter scale, struck about 540km from Singapore shortly after 5am. Its epicentre was off the west coast of northern Sumatra, near the town of Padang.

Half an hour later, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake struck again. At least seven people were killed and 150 injured in Sumatra while hundreds of homes were brought down, local officials and police said.

Three aftershocks sent residents rushing out of their homes in the region, where memories of the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami which devastated Aceh further to the north are still fresh.

Bedok South resident Chan Kok Keong told Today he was woken up at 5.40am by the "clanging" of his dining room chandeliers. The site supervisor said he felt "giddy" but said it was not as bad as the tsunami tremors.
links
Related articles on Singapore: general environmental issues
about the site | email ria
  News articles are reproduced for non-profit educational purposes.
 

website©ria tan 2003 www.wildsingapore.com