A violent tremor was felt in parts of Malaysia, and bloggers, experienced in early detection of crisis when blogging about the Asian Tsunami disaster, came out with warnings. Those who I picked up blogging early on this issue are;
Andreas from AlwaysWOW
Peter Tan from Digital Awakenings
FANTASIZED blog headlined “EARTHQUAKE!”
I blogged about it at 1616 GMT here and followed up with this post.
Jeff Ooi of Screenshots is coordinating with me on finding the latest information, as he is out and about.
you can read more posts as they appear at popular Malaysian blog aggregator, Petaling Street. This is the best place to stay in touch with bloggers who are reporting on the lastest information available to them.
It is now within half-an-hour since the first tremors were felt and reported by Malaysian bloggers. I am trawling for more information regionally.
UPDATE: CNN reports that an 8.2 earthquake occured off the coast of Sumatra at 16:54 GMT. Possible Tsunami warned Don Blakeman from US Geological Survey.
UPDATE 1707 GMT:
We have opened an IRC channel for Asian bloggers and Internet users to share resources and info on the Tsunami.
Server: DALnet
Channel: #quakeblogs
Peter Tan is moderating for now.
Am updating the latest news here and Jeff Ooi is dealing with the media here. We will be posting regular updates. Looks like a long night.
*** End Update
Update 1909 GMT
Initial transcripts from IRC channel #quakeblogs here. Deaths has been reported in Indonesia, where Medan is said to be very hard hit.
How ironic that I was writing about the Tsunami a few days ago. Trust me i find no joy in just realising this fact.
Update 2255 GMT
Tsunami alert in this region has been terminated as of 2200 GMT, and damage seems to be restricted to the earthquake. My report here. God Bless that the earthquake did not create a destructive Tsunami, like the one that ravaged this region. We are still recovering from the last tragedy and another on of similar scale would be devastating beyond imagination. South East Asia is breathing slightly easier. However there is still widespread damage and deaths resulting form the 8.7 Richter earthquake.
I will continue updating the news in this region and will round up with a case study on how bloggers in the region used technology to report the disaster, and how this time arround, bloggers were more effective and efficient in their reporting. There is definately a learning curve.
Update 0322GMT
Up to 2,000 feared dead in Indonesia. Meanwhile, a Japanese Earthquake Alert service, simply called EarthquakeAlert seems to be using blogs to market their products. They pinged me, hence I found their blog. Check out their blog here.
9 comments
I think you’re the first blogger to break the story, Zack. I’m one of the contributors to the tsunamihelp blog; thanks to your global voices story I posted it to the blog and have sent alerts to the 6000+ members of the Digital Divide Network. I’m also aggregating stories on my site, tsunami-info.org
andy carvin
Andy,
have posted your aggregator in my blog too. Thanks for help
As if these Malaysians can see Bandar Aceh from 500 miles away. This is an overhype of the “coverage” they are providing which consists of panicky “oooohh, I felt something” posts hundreds of miles from the epicentre. It’s not as if any of them are terribly concerned about the Indonesians enough to travel to Aceh.
actually stephanie of absolutely-fuzzy.com would be the first to have posted on this issue. her timestamp is 15 minutes earlier (i asked, and it’s been that way for a while now) than the actual time and it reads midnight. apparently she was searching for information right after the tremors and found a seismology site and took a screenshot before any news site reported it.
Yep. I concur. It doesn’t matter who, just that bloggers replied with speed and precision.