Earthquake!

UPDATED @ 0331 hrs SG.
News is not good - reports of people dying are coming in already.

Lord, is this a good time to ask you to be merciful? I'm having a little trouble sitting here in my air-conditioned office, thinking of the tremors I felt, and reconciling the peace and calm I see out my office window with terrified people fleeing into the dark night.

________________________________________________________________________

So I'm sitting at my desk, on duty tonight, and I'm doing my comment to a HL who had visited my blog.

I can feel my heart beating. It seems to be swaying my body gently from side to side. So I shift my ass on the chair and try to continue posting my comment. Bloody hell! I can feel my body swaying again. I stop what I'm doing and sit up. I shift my ass again. And the swaying won't stop! What the hell?

I turn to Work Buddy and ask if he can feel the swaying too! HELL YES! The building itself is swaying! We're a little worried so *hustle hustle* we grab our stuff and *quick quick* we get our asses down the stairs from 5 floors up.

We meet 2 ladies downstairs who also rushed downstairs from a building across the road. Seems we weren't the only ones to feel the buildings sway, get worried and rush out into a public area.

What do you know! The National Environment Agency posts an update not 15 minutes upon our return to the office. Earthquake in Sumatra!

METEOROLOGICAL SERVICES DIVISION, NEA
TREMOR IN SINGAPORE

***********************************************************

Serial No.: 02
The tremors felt in Singapore at 12:10 a.m. on 29 March 2005 were due to an earthquake that occurred in Southwestern Sumatra, approximately 600 km west southwest of Singapore. The magnitude of the earthquake is 8.2 on the Richter Scale. The epicentre is located at Latitude 2.1S and Longitude 97.0E.

***********************************************************

Issued by Meteorological Services Division, NEA (Tel: 6542-5059/6542-2837) on 29 Mar 2005 at 12:43 AM (Singapore Time)

Man, that's the only time I've experienced this. And it was not funny, let me tell you! SG is so sheltered by Indonesian and Manalysian land masses that no one is taught what to do, in times of natural disasters. And it was really freaky to feel those tremors!

Good grief, the Indonesians again...... 8.2 on the Richter scale. For comparison, the one that caused the Dec04 tsunami was 9.0. I hope not too many were hurt but it's late at night, and most of the Indonesian rural folk would have been in their bed long since. What are the chances that not many were hurt?


Oh boy, I'm bracing myself for scenes of heartbreak and destruction in the morning news.