When I think of tsunami's- I prefer to think of the tasty sushi restaurant in Annapolis named after the natural disaster, rather than the natural disaster itself. But in Hawaii- there is sadly no such restaurant!
As most people are probably aware of, the earthquake in Japan triggered a massive tsunami pretty much throughout the Pacific Ocean. Japan, of course, suffered the worst of the tsunami, which was even more disastrous since they had just experienced one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded. I read a story about an elderly couple that evacuated their house for the earthquake, then ran back when they heard a tsunami was coming to try and get something from the house. Of course- it made the news because they were at home when the tsunami hit and pretty much destroyed the house. The elderly man was able to climb on top of a section of roof as both the couple and house were swept out to sea. He was rescued 2 days later by helicopter, somehow still alive and afloat. Unfortunately his wife had not been found at the time of the story. Strange to think one natural disaster sent them fleeing and leaving everything behind, but the other they thought they could risk going to get something that seemed so valuable at the time. Of course the view from the outside and probably in hindsight for the man is that stuff just isn't that important.
Moving here, I parted with a lot of 'stuff'- albeit somewhat temporarily since it's all in storage on the East Coast. Bringing few things with me here, I would have thought that most of those things are very important to me, and that I would want to try and 'rescue' as much of that as possible from a situation where it was at risk of being lost. Not so much, as it turns out.
I was at work the evening of the earthquake, and scheduled to work till midnight. There is a technician scheduled from 10pm-7am to monitor the in-hospital patients and call me if there are any concerns or incoming emergencies. Around 7pm, we began getting the first warnings of the earthquake and impending tsunami watch, meaning a wave could be generated from the quake. This was shortly thereafter upgraded to a tsunami warning once a large wave had been identified in the ocean (technology, ay?!). The state of Hawaii issued an evacuation for coastal regions, which is pretty much a 2-3 block radius from the ocean for the perimeter of the island. You can see the area I live and work in at this site:
http://tsunami.csc.noaa.gov/map.html?mapname=O_AHU-KAILUA+TO+KANEOHE+BAY&submit1=Search+Island+Area
You can also see from that picture- that where I used to live, and where I work (in Kailua) the evac zone is much larger than in Kaneohe- where I have moved to, which was a great peace of mind through the whole event. Anyhow- the warning system sounds, which is series of sirens thru the island, so you can hear them pretty much anywhere. And then the phones rang like crazy! People who have to evacuate need cat carriers or want to leave a pet with us, people who have pets in the hospital want to know if they should come get them, a few clients even called to offer help evacuating the animals at the clinic. Luckily, the clinic is not in an evacuation zone, so the chaos of the latter two issues were avoided. However, and I wish I knew how to do the freeze screen thing to give you a close up visual on the evac map, the clinic is literally across the street from the pink line that separates evacuation zone, from non-evacuation zone. Now the clinic is part of a large, solid concrete building, so I doubt it would have been washed away, but could certainly take on a good bit of water with a big enough wave/surge. And I'm not the boss so it's not my call to evacuate or not, nor have I lived here long enough to understand the xyz's of island natural disasters. But I must say that I don't know who drew these pink lines and I'm pretty sure there is no pink line on the street that the water will stop at should it reach that point. I was very happy to see that my new home is several blocks away from the pink line, and a bit distraught to see how close the clinic was to said pink line. The evacuation system on the island worked fairly well overall, residents had about 4 hours to get out of the area and go to higher ground, many filled up on gas and food/water prior to leaving so lines at the supermarket and gas stations were profound. Fire trucks and police cars paroled the area to make sure everyone evacuated, announcing the warning via megaphone as they drove by.
So at midnight, I returned home and began getting a few things prepared in case of power loss (primarily several containers of water and a quick inventory of non-cook foodstuffs) as well as putting things in the car in case the evacuation zone grew larger (probably unneccessary if you could see where I live now, but it made me feel better to be doing something and be prepared!). I haven't previously mentioned my car on the island - which is a 2 door Honda civic...pretty tiny. Nor have I updated you on my new roommate (who was off-island for work during this event) and her large dog (who I am caring for while she is gone). So it ends up that in the trunk of the car, I put a small gym bag with a couple changes of clothes and toiletries, a large box of granola bars, half a case of bottled water, a sleeping bag and food for the dog and cat- pretty filling for the trunk. Inside the car- the cat carrier barely fits in the front seat, and planned for the dog to have the back seat. So there wasn't much room left in the car anyhow, but of all the other stuff in the house- the only thing I found myself looking for to pack was my passport. Both a form of ID, a nice recollection of the places I've been lucky enough to travel to, and a government document that is a pain in the ass to replace. And I think it's primarily for the latter reason that I was in search of this small booklet. Computer and camera? Nah, they're older anyway. GPS? When's the last time 'Charlie' (my gps) got me somewhere efficiently? Health records, ipod, tax information? Eh, can all be replaced. I searched for about 30 minutes for my passport, but never found it. I eventually gave up out of exhaustion from work and the excitement induced adrenaline rush that started several hours earlier. Although the tsunami was expected to hit at 3am, I pretty much crashed out at 2am- figuring that if anything changed- I would hear the whole condo complex waking up to evacuate, or get a phone call from the clinic or other friends to alert me of the change.
I slept fairly well till about 9am, then woke up to a sunny day that seemed to go on as normal in Hawaii, as if the night before had never happened. People were back in their houses already, minimal coastline damage had been encured, no injuries or loss of life. Several boats were battered from the surge of waves, but otherwise no major property damage. Just another day in Oahu, although everyone acknowledges that we were very lucky and that the warning system worked quite well. The Big Island had a bit more property damage, but still not too bad overall.
Anyhow, retrospectively I find the passport an odd item to search for and ensure safety of. But maybe that's the same frame of mind the elderly Japanese couple had- they just got fixated on one item they had to get from the house, maybe got caught searching for that item when the wave came. Hard to say what each of us would do in the heat of the moment and hard to think they acted foolishly when I potentially had some of the same impulses.
I'm definitely very thankful for everyone's thoughts and prayers throughout this event, and that overall things were pretty minor. I think the new house is really quite sheltered in location, so we'll have little to worry about even in future tsunami's. And if the clinic did choose to evacuate- I think I'd end up with a lot of animals transported here to the new house for safety- which would perhaps bring about it's own type of disaster!
