EARTHQUAKE - Tsunami Alert And Reminder

At around 4:40pm today, friends in Penang, Kedah and also many areas in Klang Valley informed me that they all felt tremors in their areas. Many of them even had to evacuate their buildings when they felt the building shaking.

Not too long afterwards, it was on the news!!

"Earthquake of 8.9 magnitude has hit the waters near Aceh Province in Indonesia". 

The magnitude however, was later revised down by the US Geological Surveythe to be 8.7 and tsunami alerts were issued. USGS confirmed that the quake centred 33km beneath the ocean floor and about 434km from Banda Aceh. 

So far, there have been no report of death from the quake. 

Let's pray that there will not be any.

This immediately brought my memory back in time to Dec 26, 2004. It was just a day after Christmas, when a giant earthquake of 9.1 magnitude occurred that day, triggering a huge and powerful tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The tsunami hit Aceh province with the speed of about 800km/h. It flattened the province to the ground and killed 230,000 people that day. 

A horrific day it was.