Residents speak of their shock

Dubai: Swinging chandeliers, moving sofas, shaking chairs and mass evacuations took place as tremors were felt across Dubai, Sharjah and some parts of Abu Dhabi at around 3pm on Wednesday.

"My flat is on the 14th floor, so it was quite bad. Everything was shaking, the night lock chain on my front door was rattling, light fixtures were shuddering and my chandeliers were shaking. It happened once and then within a few minutes happened again. I was scared and ran out picking up my purse and keys," Padmini Stump told Gulf News. Her building is located along the Sharjah Corniche.

It was a lot less dramatic for Masood N.S., a resident of the Hor Al Anz area in Deira, Dubai. "The building was swaying, the table and chair that I was seated in was shaking. The sofa that my daughter was seated in was moving, too. I checked with my wife and she said there were tremors," he said.

Panic hit parts of Dubai Internet City. A reader called Gulf News and said: "Most people felt the tremors. They were asking if it was related to the gigantic particle collider experiment that started yesterday on the French-Swiss border."

Gulf News reader Jean-Sebastien Haro-Jacquemet, said: "I was surfing the internet to follow the particle accelerometer experiment, when my body started to feel a kind of wave effect. I said to myself that most probably it was because of an empty stomach."

The intensity increased and he started to feel disoriented. He wondered if it was an earthquake.