“We saw the lights swinging and decided to go down,” said Siti Nurul Aisyah Nasser, 25, who left the building at about 2.30pm with her colleague, Junaidah Jamil, 43.

The pair, who work at government departments in Komtar, said they returned to their offices after some 30 minutes as there was no order for them to stay out.

A Komtar security officer said many had come down on their own after feeling queasy from the sudden tremor which lasted for minutes.

Another worker in Komtar, Nur Aishah Ridzuan, 24, said she and her friends decided to leave the building when they felt the tremor because they were worried about their safety, according to Bernama.

She said she also felt dizzy from the tremor. “We kept going down because we were worried something might happen and I understand someone called the fire department. Thank God everyone is safe,” she said.
At an office block in Northam Road, Aaron Ngui, 42, said he noticed the tremors only after a colleague pointed them out.

“When I stood up, I felt the floor shaking and saw the lights swaying left to right,” said Ngui, who works at a leadership development firm.

Ngui said he checked online and found news of the quake, and later confirmed that a colleague in Bangkok had safely evacuated.

The 7.7-magnitude earthquake brought down a skyscraper under construction in Bangkok, killing at least one person, and toppled a mosque and a hotel in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city. At least five people were killed in Mandalay.