Mysterious “loud bang” jolts Ipoh

IPOH (Oct 4): It can get quite quiet in parts of this sleepy Perak capital and when a loud bang and tremor was heard and felt this morning, some folk here got a tad curious/worried.

So, the authorities here are making an effort to get to the bottom of what caused “the bang” at about 11am today.

They are, however, still “baffled” to what caused the loud sound.

“We are still trying to obtain information that could lead us to determine the source of the sound,” district police chief Assistant Commissioner Mohd Ali Tamby said in a short WhatsApp statement to the media, reported the Malay Mail.

He also said that none of the district stations received any report on what could have led to the loud sound.

Could it be an earthquake since neighbouring Indonesia had been experiencing tremors and volcanic eruption?

Nope. The Malaysia Meteorological Department confirmed that the sound was NOT due to an earthquake.

“The explosion and tremors felt in Perak were not due to an earthquake as there were no warnings of an earthquake as detected by earthquake detectors,” said the department’s director-general Alui Bahari, according to a Bernama report.

The incident went viral on the social media when netizens claimed that it was due rock mining activities in the quarry in Simpang Pulai here.

Others claimed that the bang was due to exercises being conducted by the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF), using explosives,

But the RMAF did not receive any information on such exercises, reported Bernama.

Babysitter Raja Azura Raja Abdullah, 24, was at a nursery here when she heard an explosion and felt a tremor while feeding the children under her care at about 11am.

“The sound of the blast was not very loud but I felt the tremor as I was feeding the children then,” she told Bernama.

A resident in Taiping, who declined to be named, said she heard the loud bang when she was working in her office.

“I was shocked as the sound of the blast was very loud but it was only lasted for a few seconds,” she told Bernama.