Daria from Kamchatka in Russia was in her pyjamas at home when she felt a powerful quake. Soon after, the sirens in her town began blaring and she rushed out, much like the rest of her district.

“I was quite scared,” she told Khaleej Times. “This was the most powerful earthquake I have ever felt in my entire life. Everyone in my district ran out on the street, most of them wearing pyjamas just like me and carrying nothing. When the sirens howled, we knew it meant the threat of a tsunami. So the whole crowd went to the high ground. Everyone was panicking.”

On Wednesday, a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake off Russia’s eastern Kamchatka Peninsula triggered tsunami alerts across the world including Japan and US and prompting evacuations in several coastal areas. Later in the day, some countries downgraded the alerts.

Daria said she was going to spend the next few days in her Dacha — a country house used as a summer home. “Almost everyone in our city is going away to their dacha,” she said. “We are incredibly lucky. The last significant earthquake occurred in 1952, when a tsunami wave destroyed several settlements, reaching a height of 15 metres. Thank God, we didn’t have to face that, and the situation has improved. The strong tsunami wave has passed by us now.”

Change of plans

Emirati national Umm Abdul Rahman was in Shanghai with her extended family group of 12 people when news of the tropical cyclone and tsunami reached her.

“We got to know through our family and news reports that warnings were being issued and evacuations were happening,” she said. “It was extremely windy and raining heavily in the part of Shanghai that we were in. However, we were not in a place that needed evacuations.”

She added that she and her family changed their plans due to the weather conditions. “We were planning to go to the zoo today, but we cancelled that,” she said. “We did a little bit of shopping in underground areas and then headed straight to the hotel. We dropped the rest of our plans because we didn’t want to risk getting caught out in the bad weather.”

She said that she was thankful that they were safe. “We have been following the news and saw that there were mass evacuations in many parts of Shanghai,” she said. “We are very thankful that our area has been relatively unaffected and we have managed to stay safe.”

Alerts issued

Former Dubai resident Afzal Hussain was at work in New Zealand when he got an alert on his phone about a tsunami advisory. There was heavy rain and strong winds throughout the day in his city. He left early so he could be home with his teenage daughter. “School was already over, and my daughter was at a friend’s house close by,” he said. “I got off work early so I could pick her up and we stayed home.”

He added that such advisories were fairly regular in New Zealand. “It is not a very serious weather advisory because there are no evacuations,” he said. “On such occasions, we don’t stock up or anything, but we don’t go out much. So, on Wednesday, we just spent the rest of the day at home.”