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‘I thought I was going to faint’: Tremors felt in S’pore after quake in Indonesia

SINGAPORE — An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 shook buildings and caused momentary panic in the Indonesian port city of Padang on Thursday (June 2). However, there were no immediate reports of damage or injury in that country.

Singaporeans downstairs after feeling a tremor caused by the latest earthquake to hit Indonesia on June 2, 2016. Photo: @parrysingh/Twitter

Singaporeans downstairs after feeling a tremor caused by the latest earthquake to hit Indonesia on June 2, 2016. Photo: @parrysingh/Twitter

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SINGAPORE — Tremors were felt in Singapore after an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.5 shook buildings and caused momentary panic in the Indonesian port city of Padang on Thursday (June 2).

An alert issued by the National Environment Agency (NEA) on its MyENV app at 7.38am said: “Tremors due to the earthquake were felt in parts of Singapore. There is no tsunami advisory."

The quake was centred about 155km south of Padang, off the coast of Sumatra island at a depth of about 50km, the United States Geological Survey said. It had originally been reported with a magnitude of 6.2. There were no immediate reports of damage or injury in that country.

Several people around Singapore felt the resulting tremors as the sun came up. In St George’s Lane, Ms Jasmin Rizhwana, 29, was getting ready for work when she too felt the tremors around 7am. “I was going to enter my bedroom when the door to the other room on the opposite side started thumping even though it was closed, like someone was hitting the door. My husband, who was in the toilet, then came out and asked if I felt the tremors,” said the 29-year-old, lives on the 12th floor of her block.

“You could (feel the flat moving) like you’re going up and down, like you were in a boat. I felt giddy and thought I was going to faint. I went outside and my neighbours also felt it.”

Facebook user Putri, who stays on the 10th floor of her block in Marine Terrace reported feeling tremors at 7.15am. “It lasted around 15 seconds. I was in the kitchen. Suddenly, I felt dizzy. I walked to the living room and saw the lights shaking,” said Ms Putri, who took a video and posted it online.

Ms Noorul Hutha, who lives in Crawford Lane was asleep but was woken up because she could feel the flat moving at 7am. “I thought it was a dream. I went to the hall and saw my parents there, they told me about the earthquake,” she told TODAY.

“There is a hotel opposite where we live and we could see the hotel guests all coming downstairs. I didn’t go down because by the time I got out of my room, (the tremors) had already stopped. We are all fine but it was quite horrifying to wake up to that,” Ms Noorul said, adding that she was often worried that a repeat of the 2004 tsunmai disaster might occur.

Memories are still fresh of that massive 9.15 magnitude undersea quake that triggered an Indian Ocean tsunami which killed more than 200,000 people in a dozen countries. Most of those killed were in the province of Aceh on Sumatra’s northwest tip.

Indonesia is on the the so-called “Pacific Ring of Fire”, a highly seismically active zone, where different plates on the earth’s crust meet and create a large number of earthquakes and volcanoes.

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