An academic has called for earthquake drills in schools nationwide, saying children must be trained to respond to tremors just like they do during fire drills.
Noor Sheena Herayani Harith, a Universiti Malaysia Sabah lecturer who helped draft the country’s earthquake building manual, said schools in Ranau and Lahad Datu are already practising this.
“We usually tell students they must follow three steps: drop, take cover, and hold under a table or in an open area with no furniture,” she said.
Speaking in the latest episode of the Keluar Sekejap podcast, Noor Sheena said the Segamat earthquake on Aug 24 was the first recorded in over a century in that region, based on 200 years of seismic records.
She said the last known earthquakes in Johor were in 1922, with their epicentres in Muar and Batu Pahat.
Noor Sheena noted that in 2011, a US professor had determined Malaysia to be just at the fringe of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
She said most Malaysians do not take earthquakes seriously as they are mild and the damage is limited, but said the 2004 Aceh tsunami remains a wake-up call that the country is not immune to tragedy.
She said that in the peninsula, the strongest recorded earthquake was in Bukit Tinggi in 2009, which had a magnitude of 4.5, while a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit Lahad Datu in Sabah in 1976.
Asked by podcast host Khairy Jamaluddin if tall buildings like KLCC, Merdeka 118, and Tun Razak Exchange were safe, Noor Sheena said buildings have been built in adherence to seismic building standards since 2016.
She said her team had helped develop the Malaysian National Annex, which guides how engineers should design buildings to withstand earthquakes, with buildings built under the new code designed to withstand up to magnitude 7.
Buildings completed before 2016 may not meet today’s seismic standards, but can be reinforced without being torn down.
“We can retrofit old buildings, add steel to the joints, and thicken critical parts. That’s one way to save costs,” she said, adding, however, that no law requires such retrofits at the moment.
