Ok this is my version of how things went down today.
4:00 AM; I was sound asleep. Seth was subbing for someone and was working the night shift (11pm-7am) so I was alone. My phone rang, and I saw it was Seth. I didn't look at the time, but I assumed he was just calling to tell me that he was on his way home because I needed the car to go to my yoga class later that morning. I picked up the phone and he told me something about Chile having an 8.8 magnitude earthquake and that a tsunami was coming and that I needed to get out of the house. But I'm not completely coherent at 4am and all I pretty much heard was "earthquake....tsunami.....GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!"
Umm...scary? YES! Once again, I have to mention that I wasn't very coherent. I was in the middle of REM sleep when I woke up, it was dark, I was alone, and the word tsunami scared me to tears. Here in HI, we have quite a bit of tsunami scares. Our house is near the coastline and usually we don't have much time to get a move on things.....so what did I do?
I cried. The most productive thing to do, right?
Seth continues to tell me that my neighbor is coming to get me and that I needed to go with them until he got back. He hung up with me and my neighbor came to the door. I was a mess. I think I was half dressed too. Turns out she was the one to contact Seth about the tsunami warning. She calmed me down and told me that they just heard on the news that we had until 11:00 am until the tsunami hit O'ahu, and that she would let me know when they were leaving.
So I turned on the news. They were pretty panicked about the whole thing; telling us that the tsunami and flooding was inevitable. They were giving us a list of things to stock up on for about a week, and telling us that everyone on the coastline needed to head for higher ground. At this point you could kind of hear a buzz around Laie with people getting ready. My heart was pounding so hard. It was about 4:15 am.
I called Seth and told him what our neighbor said. He told me that he was leaving work and going to come and get me. He told me to pack some stuff for him too, and that we should go to my Grandma's house in Honolulu.
So I packed:
I woke up my grandma and told her what was going on and that we were coming in a little over an hour. She lives in Kahala area in Honolulu, up on the mountain, and I knew that would be a safe place to be. I quickly packed essentials for the both of us: food, water, clothes, flashlights, etc. When he got home about a half hour later, I was so happy to see him. Its a scary thing to be away from your love when there is a pending natural disaster. I hope I never have to do that again.
Anyway, so now HI was starting to go into mass hysteria. Cars were lined up like crazy at the nearest Chevron gas station and the news was showing WalMart and Costco being ravaged by people trying to stock up on essentials. We were lucky that we had everything that we needed. It seemed like such a nightmare to have to go to WalMart or Costco at that time. We wanted to leave as soon as possible because we wanted to beat the traffic heading to higher ground. So when Seth got home, we spent 10 minutes packing everything that we could, and were able to grab some valuables, like laptops, camera, important documents, and the little jewelry I have. We put up some other stuff in case our apt. flooded and left immediately. Traffic wasn't so bad. We left at about 4:45 am. Gas stations were packed and a lot of people were camped up on the Pali. Here is a picture (a terrible picture, but a picture nonetheless) of the crazy lines at one gas station:
We made it to grandmas house a little before 6am. This is the view from her house:
High up, huh? By this point newscasters were still telling us that a tsunami wave was going to hit O'ahu at about 11:30 and that we all needed to evacuate and prepare for power outages and stock up on water. I felt safe at grandma's house, so after watching the news for a bit, Seth and I were able to sleep for a few hours.
**And just a side note I am SO GRATEFUL that Baloo is on the mainland with my family. What a pain it would have been to have my stubborn, fatty bulldog to have to cart around with his supplies. Whew.**
I couldn't really sleep because I kept dreaming about tsunamis. And plus calls from family and friends were pouring in and I just ended up talking to people and telling them what I knew. The first wave was supposed to hit Hilo at about 11 am, then Maui, and then O'ahu at 11:30 am. All of the roads were cleared and a lot of people were heading out in boats, as you can see in the background of the picture below:
The clips the news were showing of the highways and Waikiki were a little eerie. Normally these places are so busy and now they were deserted. And plus that tsunami siren kept going off. That thing really creeps me out. Every time I hear it the hair stands up on my neck. Even our friends were telling us on the phone that the siren was eerie when they heard it on the news! The news stations were also showing clips of people swimming and surfing in the ocean. Crazy people! They also mentioned over and over again that it was a bad idea to try and surf a tsunami wave. Does that really have to be said out loud? I would assume something like that would be included in your common sense! I guess they needed to mention it because there were a few people that decided to go swimming.
So, when 11am came around, we were all watching and......nothing really happened. They kept showing a live shot of Hilo bay and the tides going in and out....and that is about it. They kept saying that series of 12ft waves might come in... but they didn't.
At this time I noticed the tide out in Honolulu to be really low, as is the typical precursor to a tsunami. But 11:30 rolled around....12:00....1:00...nothing happened.
They cancelled the tsunami warning at around 2pm? I think? I don't know I was taking a nap by then. We ended up staying for dinner with grandma and just hanging out.
All in all it was an incredibly long day, but better safe than sorry, right? A lot of people were complaining that they had to go through so much for nothing, but if a tsunami warning came on again tomorrow I would evacuate and do everything I did today again. Except for my crying and non-coherent rambling earlier in the morning. :)
Better safe than sorry. And at least we were able to spend some time with my grandma. Its good to be with family when things like this happen. Or were going to happen I should say.
Driving home we were able to see all of the low tides effects. That's pretty much all that we got. Oh and like 3 ft waves.
Probably the best part of the day was when we got home and we were able to see our choices of the things that we decided to save from flooding. They were pretty funny.
Here were my choices:
My shoes, Wii fit, and... yes, that's a yoga mat up on the top of the cupboard. Yoga Mat??? Seriously? hehe. Mind you this was 4 in the morning!
Seth's choices:
You can't really tell in this picture because I am so short and can't take a high enough picture, but up there are the TV, DVR, and his Xbox. hehe.
Don't worry, we took our important things with us, like scriptures, pictures, and all of our documents. But it was still a good laugh.
I'm glad everyone is safe and that this whole day didn't have a bad ending for HI. Though I am grateful that HI wasn't affected by a tsunami, I am sad about the effects of the earthquake in Chile. We'll keep their families in our prayers.
I am so sleep deprived, so I am going to end it here.
G'night!
