Earthquake

Very early this morning an Earthquake erupted on the western side of Sumatra on the Richter scale of 8.7. The estimated loss of life was about 2000 but officials admitted that it was based on the building damage. Now we felt it here in KL, but only as a mild shaking akin to that of a heavy lorry passing close to your home and certainly not on the scale anywhere near that of Sumatra. Our cats for the best didn’t budge or respond to it in anyway, however they had for most of the day and especially the evening been acting out of character. I even found them trying to hide amongst some of the storage boxes left over from the last move. However the thing that struck me was that when I was reading the BBC news website , the reports for Malaysia seem to center on the comments made by various subscribers from KL and Singapore. Most of these came across as if the earthquake had had a greater impact cue stories of shaking curtains and rattling crockery and building evacuations. I sensed a great deal of unfounded panic. I didn’t even feel the last earthquake in December, so I can’t see how this was likely to feel any worse. KL and most of Malaysia is sheltered from most of the effects by the island of Sumatra as seen from the results of the Tsunami. Despite KL being in the vicinity of the earthquake we are quite lucky. I am under the impression that these reports coming from Singapore and KL demonstrate that either the building they live in has poor foundations which means that a lot of people are going to have a lot more questions about their building other than the possible effect of the earthquake or we should handing out a few Oscars. At the very least this event will remind the world that has begun to forget December 26th that there are a lot of people who still need our help.


Music of the moment Vangelis - Conquest of Paradise