Friday, March 11, 2011

Rough Night

Well, we lived through our second Hawaii tsunami.  You might recall last year's anticlimactic tsunami caused by an earthquake in Chile.  It was pretty uneventful.  The water levels changed by several feet but not enough to cause any flooding or damage. 

Last night we were sitting in the living room relaxing before bed when Mom announced there was an earthquake in Japan, which she saw on her facebook.  Immediately after that Adam got a call from his chain of command requesting that he activate his emergency call roster to let people know a tsunami was expected to hit Hawaii around three a.m. and anyone in flood zones needed to evacuate.  Of course none of our phones worked because the cell lines were overloaded and we don't have a land line.  Shortly after, we heard the tsunami sirens going off.

I went to bed around ten and had the same dream all night long that we were having to evacuate and take shelter.  Adam's phone kept going off the whole night long with text messages and phone calls.  Poor Avery woke up with the noise and couldn't get back to sleep so (poor) Mama finally got up and walked her around for at least an hour.  Then the tsunami sirens were going off during the night.  And THEN Adam's alarm went off at oh-dark-hundred.  We did not sleep well last night!

I don't think any of Hawaii slept.  Everyone in flood zones had to evacuate to high ground, and the military had to move all the ships out of Pearl Harbor and the planes off the runways.   We learned last year that you can never really predict how big a tsunami will be until it hits because the swells can build so quickly.  Earthquakes thousands of miles away can cause tsunamis here, hence the minor panic after the earthquake in Japan last night.  I feel so bad for everyone there.  Luckily Hawaii got off with just some flooding and no major damage from seven foot waves crashing on the shores.

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