Tsunami Day

We survived our first tsunami! Here’s how it all went down…

Friday Night
10:30pm – Arrive home from mediocre movie, watch end of Olympics coverage, catch beginning of the news. Learn of Chile quake, get very sad for the people of Chile, shudder in fear of an 8.5 quake. See news of tsunami warning. Think “hmm, that’s nuts but I suppose a quake that big could move the ocean all the way to Hawaii.”
11:00pm – Go to bed because I’m an old lady and it’d been a very, very long week.

Saturday Morning
6:00am – Awake to horrid alarm outside. Think about it for a bit, turn to Bryan and ask him “what do you think that alarm is for?” He responds, “Probably the neighbor’s fire alarm.” I know he is very wrong. I say, “I think it’s a tsunami warning. I’ll go check the news.”
6:02am – Out of bed on Saturday morning, very alert. Look outside. Very pretty. Turn on TV. Yep, we are under a tsunami warning. First wave should hit at 11am. Pick up laptop, check Facebook, update Facebook status. I mean, what would you have done?
6:15am – Bryan enters SURVIVAL mode. He’s sort of a nut about emergency rations and stuff. He opens the cabinet above the refrigerator that I can’t even reach. This is where I make him store all the weird emergency stuff he buys. Then I make him throw it out when it expires. I’m sure some day I’ll be very thankful for that cabinet. For now, I roll my eyes at him. He determines all we have in the cabinet is canned green beans and water. This will not do!
6:30am – Bryan is making list of new emergency rations we need. But he’s so amped he can’t think straight. “Beef jerky?! More green beans?!” No! No! So together we create a list. My items include “bananas and canned chicken.” I insist he only buys things we can eat eventually. This is crazy talk to him.
7:00am – I have checked every news channel and every news website. Convinced tsunami is for real. Study map of ocean trying to come up with my own conclusion as to how bad it could really be. Survey very messy house and get motivated to clean it lest I be trapped for days without water to wash dishes or electricity to run the dust buster.
Note: after the earthquake three years ago, the power and water were off ALL DAY.
7:10am – I refuse to go to the grocery store with Flight-or-Fight Bryan. He heads off. I turn up the sound on the TV and start washing dishes. I pause to check the TV or Facebook about every 15 minutes. Also take a picture of the sunrise.
8:00am-ish – I see a Facebook post from friends that pretty much live on the beach. I immediately offer for them to seek refuge at our place. Then I immediately grab a sponge and go to town on our bathroom and then our floors. Because it would suck enough to have a tsunami hit Hawaii but have our friends see how messy our house can get? I would DIE!
9:00am – Learn friends ended up somewhere else. Chill out on the cleaning.
9:05am – Really wonder why Bryan has been gone for so long. Worry about the chaos he may have discovered at the grocery store.
9:15am – Bryan arrives home very tired, very annoyed.
9:17am – Conversation about what exactly we will do with a large can of Dinty Moore stew. I refuse to eat it until I am starving. News reports that after 10am all water use should be limited to “emergency situations only.” Huh. Take showers, lest we be stuck stinky for days.
9:30am – Fill up pitchers and other containers of drinking water. Continue watching the news. See that large waves killed people on an island off of Chile. Learn that rather small waves hit other Pacific Islands.
10:00am – Sit and watch TV, return text messages, check Facebook.
11:05am – Intently watch TV coverage of Hilo. First wave is supposed to hit now. Learn that largest wave may not hit first. The risk could continue for hours and hours. Really? We’ve been braced for five hours already.
11:15am – Absolutely nothing has happened in Hilo. But keep staring at the same low-res image of Hilo Bay.
11:25am – Water levels at Hilo Bay are changing! The weather man tells us how DRAMATIC this sight is. We squint to try to see the drama. We learn a lot about water movement.
11:45am – We have seen the water level changing in Hilo. While not devastating, it is pretty crazy to watch it change. We see still images of the reef exposed in Maui, and one flopping fish. We hear reports that the humpback whales are acting unusual. We definitely get sucked into the media buzz and turn to each other to exclaim “Wow” when the water changes direction.
Noon – We are shown footage of the water level change on Oahu but can’t see what they’re talking about.
12:45pm – I keep watching just in case something amazing happens. Nothing does.
1:00pm – I change the channel to Bravo. Bryan takes a nap.

And that was our tsunami day. Anti-climatic to say the least. Of course, no one wanted the excitement that would have been the worst-case scenario. But you start to want something to make all that wasted adrenaline worth it.

Truth is that it wasn’t a false alarm. There was a tsunami. They measured 5 foot surges from peak to trough. We certainly saw it affecting Hilo Bay. It just wasn’t what you think of when you are awoken at 6am by a tsunami alarm.