This Saturday's Adventure: Tsunami

It's been over a month since we've been in the water due to chilly temperatures, work, and hiking. We were ready to surf, and looked forward to it all week. Friday, we at least ended our drought with some terrific boogie boarding waves at Brennecke's (we don't get a lot of great days during the winter months).

Friday night, we tuned in for our nightly Olympics hoorah, catching some Jimmy Fallon at the end. Did you see the thank-you note jokes? Hilarious. "Thank-you, Apolo Ohno for being to frozen water what Michael Phelps is to regular water. Oh no he didn't. More like Ohno he did!" You know comedians have been dying to use the Ohno pun.

Afterwards, we saw the news on Chile's 8.8 earthquake, and heard that the ramifications could include a tsunami. We were interested, but not particularly concerned.

5:15am: Our home phone rings, and we get an "urgent message" telling us a tsunami is imminent and we need to prepare.

6:00am: Calls from family and friends start rolling in by the dozens. (Thanks for everyone's concern!). The first sirens ring, and continue to do so every hour.

7:30am: Still answering calls, and looking at each other like, "Now what?" We decide to go running.

9:00am: Back from our runs, we are both a little freaked out. Roads are closing, resorts are closed off, and the streets are empty. It seems that everyone in our neighborhood is packing up for a major disaster--generators, deep freezers, tons of water coolers, etc. are filling up the backs of trucks and our street is nearly deserted. (We are considered the flood zone, since we're only 100 yards from the water.)

9:15am: We start moving our important things to higher surfaces, filling up water bins, and packing up our computers. We move wedding albums, unplug our appliances, and pack up several days of clothing. The TV is still blaring with messages from President Obama, our govenor, and newscasters reminding us that "this is no false alarm." It's feeling kind of surreal.

10:30am: We pull out of our driveway, watching as a helicopter flies over our house blaring, "MOVE TO HIGHER GROUND." We drive to Lihue, observing all the tourists pulled over on the side of the highway, not knowing where to go besides "higher ground."

11:00am: We get to Nic and Heidi's, and stayed glued to the TV for ages, waiting for the tsunami to hit Hilo at 11:05am. We wait, and wait, and wait. The tide starts to rapidly change, and all of us got really excited and anxious. Then the water just filled back in slowly.

11:30am: We get tired of waiting, record the station that's showing Hilo, and watch BYU get beat by New Mexico.

2:00pm: The tsunami threat is over and beaches reopen.

So goes our first experience with a tsunami. The wave in Hilo was 3 feet, and same for the wave in Oahu. We were "hit" with a smaller wave.

5:00pm: We boogie boarded in 6 foot waves.

The whole event was so anti-climatic, but an interesting exercise in emergency preparation. What struck me the most was the feeling we should be doing something that morning, but not really knowing what we should do. It was strange to look around our house in terms of, "If we have several inches of water, what will get damaged that we want to preserve?" and "Geesh, there's nothing we can do about our garage storage at this point." I'm glad nothing disasterous happened, especially considering the horrible circumstances in Chile.