Singapore buildings sway after strong quake hits Indonesia
Posted: 12 September 2007 1941 hrs

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SINGAPORE : Singapore buildings swayed after an earthquake hit Indonesia on Wednesday evening.

Residents in various parts of the island felt the quake and people in some buildings, including in the central business district, were evacuated as a safety precaution.

Areas in Singapore which felt the tremors included Novena, Paris Ris, Raffles Place, Potong Pasir, Marsiling, Toa Payoh and Thomson Road.

Singapore's Meteorological Services said the earthquake measured 8.5 on the Richter Scale. The preliminary reading was 7.9.

The earthquake struck out at sea at 7.10pm. Its epicentre was 120 kilometres south-west of the Sumatran town of Bengkulu, at a depth of 15 kilometres.

This is some 670 kilometres from Singapore.

The Meteorological Services advised that a regional tsunami may be generated, but its preliminary assessment is that this is unlikely to affect Singapore.

The quake was strongly felt in the Indonesian capital Jakarta, some 600 kilometres away, with tall buildings swaying.

An official at the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said a tsunami warning had been issued.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a tsunami alert for the entire Indian Ocean region, while India's Government Ocean Centre also issued a tsunami alert for Andaman Islands.

Indonesia was the nation worst hit by the earthquake-triggered tsunami of December 2004, which killed some 168,000 people in Aceh province alone.

The archipelago nation sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire" where continental plates collide, causing frequent seismic and volcanic activity.

Wednesday's tremors were the latest in a series of tremors felt in Singapore as a result of an earthquake in the region.

The last was as recently as 6 March this year after an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter Scale hit Padang, Indonesia.

A second quake measuring 6.1 hit the same area two hours later, causing a second round of tremors in Singapore.

Other tremors were also felt on 18 December 2006 and 29 March 2005.

But the worst quake in the last 40 years was the 26 December 2004 quake off Sumatra, which triggered a series of devastating tsunamis along the coastlines of parts of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia.

These came to be known collectively as the Asian Tsunami, and is the ninth deadliest natural disaster by death toll in modern history.

The United Nations had put the death toll at about 230,000 people.

That quake was originally recorded as 9.0 but this was later increased to between 9.1 and 9.3, making it the second largest earthquake ever recorded on a seismograph.

It lasted between 8 to 10 minutes. - CNA/ch/ms