Please evacuate the building...and take half day off

*Happily posted by Moo on behalf of Bbit :)))*

The two earthquakes that hit Padang, Sumatra this afternoon, measured a 6.5 and 6.6 on the Richter scale. Tremors could be felt in certain parts of Singapore and this caused many people to panic and led to evacuation operations being carried out in the CBD, Beach Rd and other parts of Singapore.

I just finished watching Channel News Asia's coverage on the tremors today and it has just confirmed my conviction that Singaporeans tend to overreact. They reported that many employees at the Hong Leong Building felt dizzy and a few vomited. I must confess that I, too, was feeling rather giddy myself and was swaying a bit while walking, but vomiting? Were the tremors really that bad that it would cause one to feel nauseated and vomit? What's more, the building authorities were flooded with calls straight after. There were even rumours of cracks in buildings and paranoia was abound.

I remember feeling the tremors (apparently no one else could) for only less than a minute. I looked up to see if it was my phone vibrating, or was it because I was giddy (hence I looked away from the monitor). Then I turned my head to look at the buildings outisde to see if the one I was in was swaying at all. And I did all that in less than half a minute, before realising it could be an earthquake in Indonesia. What else could it be? Then I stopped swaying. I knew the earthquake couldn't have been so strong that it would cause any buildings in Singapore to collapse.

Back to the special coverage. Channel News Asia then proceeded to show footage of schools and polytechnics being evacuated (you could obviously see the students grinning from ear to ear), office employees clearing the buildings in the CBD area (you could see them laughing and pointing; being the mature adults they are, they love poking fun at everything), and of the residents in the heartlands. Other footage included amatuer videos and still images of the evacuation and effects of the tremors on their chandeliers or fish tanks.

Bunny even showed me a snippet of the news report she was reading this afternoon, stating how some employees were weeping and screaming while making their way out of the building. This is not even close to what occurred in NY on 9/11, so why are they panic-stricken and desperate to get out of the building because of teeny tiny tremors? That says it yet again – yes, we ARE kiasi on top of being kiasu.

There's a lot of hoo-haa about today's tremors from the Sumatra quake, but shouldn't the news be covering the situation in Sumatra itself, considering 70 people (and god knows how many injured) had died due to the quake? Isn't the situation there more important and deserves to be highlighted to people who are only concerned about “tremors”? Maybe I had missed the report on Sumatra, I'm not sure, but I do know that the tremors we experienced today were microscopic and minute in importance.

Ever since the first day of 2007, I've been keeping track of the number of earthquakes that have occured. I lost count once I reached the earthquake that occurred in Taiwan (because I was so pissed off with the Internet being disrupted). All I can remember now is that during the first week of January, the world had already seen about four earthquakes. We are now into March, and I remember seeing earthquakes being reported every single week, and ever so often in Indonesia. So it's no surprise that it has happened again.

Being situated so close to Indonesia, it's no surprise that Singapore experiences earthquake tremors from time to time. Although it causes our buildings to sway and citizens to vomit, what's important is that it is not as large a scale as the Boxing Day tsunami.