KOTA KINABALU: The Meteorological Department in Sabah has called on people in the state, particularly those living on coastal areas, not to panic over the devastating earthquakes and tsunami in Japan.
From the department’s monitoring system, no tsunami was detected off the coasts of Sabah since the first strong earthquake hit near the east coast of Honshu in Japan last Friday, its director, Abdul Malik Tussin, told the Borneo Post here yesterday.
If the powerful tsunami from the east coast of Japan last weekend were to hit the coasts of Sabah, the possibility would come from two sides, he explained.
“One would be from the South China Sea in the Pacific that would affect Kudat and the West Coast region. Another would be through the Sulawesi Sea that would affect the Tawau region on the east coast.
“But nothing has happened on both sides since Friday,” he said in an interview by phone.
When asked about the widespread hand-phone text messages saying that large numbers of seashells had appeared at the seashores in Putatan on Sunday, he said members of his staff were sent to investigate the reports.
“They checked the beaches there at Putatan, all they found was high tide and high waves, but no seashells as reported,” he said.
According to the department’s official website, the first strong earthquake near the east coast of Honshu in Japan occurred at 1.46pm near the east coast of Honshu in Japan on Friday (March 11) at 8.8 on the Richter scale, 4,343km from Kudat in Sabah. Since then, there had been several aftershocks.
The latest strong earthquake announced by the department, measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale, occurred at 2.12pm yesterday also off the east coast of Honshu in Japan, 334km from north-east of Tokyo and 4,299km from Kudat.
The department stated that there was no tsunami threat to Malaysia for the latest earthquake.
Malik reminded the public the existence of the National Early Tsunami Warning System that covers the coastal regions of Sabah and Sarawak as well as other parts of the country.
Among the equipment installed within the system include: broadband and short-period seismic sensors, coastal cameras, tidal gauge stations, tsunami buoys at sea and warning sirens at strategic locations.
All information and data from the system are monitored and processed by the department’s head office in Petaling Jaya, he said.