hello friends, it's been awhile. sorry about that. things have been busy out here in hawaii. i'll fill you in on the major things later, but this post is about the tsunami since i have friends that have wanted to hear about it so here it goes...
thursday march 10th 2011
i walked into my living room and opened up my laptop to go where...? obviously facebook. as i read through my news feed i saw a friend here who mentioned in their status that there was a tsunami watch. immediately i freaked out as my two roommates rachel and savanna sat back and laughed at the show.
(alright, i'll be honest. maybe i freaked out a bit too much. but my biggest fear coming out to hawaii was that a tsunami would hit us. and the fact that they weren't freaking out about it was freaking me out!)
i ran outside and called one of my best friends from back home who was still up b.c it was about 1am on the east coast when i found out. he calmed me down and i realized it was probably nothing, but then while i was standing outside i saw a million cars driving on the road. i walked out and saw a line of cars backed up from the gas station and our neighbors who were locals packing up their stuff into their car. that's when i got scared.
i walked back into my house and turned on the news and learned about everything with the 8.9 earthquake that hit japan. i called my parents and woke them up so that they knew there was a tsunami watch, but i kept telling myself that nothing was going to happen. keep in mind, last year around the same time there was a tsunami warning from the earthquake in chile and nothing happened. but this earthquake was bigger. and japan was closer to us.
my roommate rachel and i walked back outside to look at all the cars and that's when she started getting scared too. right then our two friends steven and kenneth drove up b.c they heard and figured we would be freaking out. our neighbors were starting to evacuate and that's when it hit me that we needed to do something. our house is directly on the beach. (as i'm typing this i can hear the waves crashing.) kenneth is from the island and his parents live in a city about an hour from here that is inland and his parents wanted him to evacuate soon before the traffic got worse. we decided we would wait until they declared it a tsunami warning because otherwise we didn't really have anything to worry about. well about 3 minutes later they declared it a tsunami warning and that if we were close to shore we needed evacuate at least a half mile inland. so we called up our friends to figure out where everyone was. kenneth and steven left to go pack a bag and we packed up our stuff. we moved everything off of the floor onto our beds and brought our bikes inside of the house.
our neighbors came over who were locals to make sure that we were in the process of evacuating. packing up a bag was weird. we had about 15 minutes to pack up our stuff. there was a possibility that all our stuff could be damaged and we had to figure out what was the most important stuff to bring. after leaving our house we got picked up and went around to pick up our other friends. then we were off to mililani. it took longer to get there because of the traffic. and they said that the tsunami wasn't supposed to hit until about 2:30am so we knew we had time. driving there the phone lines went out. mostly at&t. it was frustrating b.c i couldn't talk to my family or friends back home to let them know. we got there around midnight and after that i knew we were safe. thank goodness for the internet because i was able to use facebook and email to get in contact with my family and friends. i was more calm but still scared that i could either come back to a destroyed house or a flooded house and i really didn't want that to happen.
now if you know me well, then you know i freak out. it's quite a talent. i can't help it. i get scared easily. i think i said about 3 words on the almost 2 hour drive to mililani because i was so uneasy about everything. but hey, i'm glad that others found comedic relief from my anxiety. at least some people could smile from the night.
watching the news was kind of painful. and listening to the sirens was not fun either. they said that the tsunami would impact the island kuai first and then our island (oahu). it was scheduled to hit kuai at 3:07am and oahu at 3:21am. the worst was when the news anchor announced 3 cities on our island that would be hit the hardest and one of them was kahuku (the city directly next to my home. about a minute drive to get there b.c our town is so small). they expected a 6 foot wall of water to surge into the island.
we watched a movie to waste away the time. but as it got closer to 3am we watched the news. it was quite possibly one of the weirdest experiences i've ever had. they had a tsunami countdown (like they do for new years) and we sat and waited until 3:07am. but nothing happened. slowly we all fell asleep watching the news. i remember waking up around 5am and hearing that some islands had been hit but nothing too bad to our island so i feel back asleep. the next morning as we turned on the news to see what all had happened i felt so horrible for the people of japan. the tsunami ended up hitting the islands of maui and the big island with some waves up to 12 feet. our island got hit a little but nothing near what they had expected. i was so relieved to hear that.
also, the phone lines worked again and i woke up to tons of text messages from my wonderful friends. i was able to call my family and some friends and let them know i was okay. i am so grateful that nothing horrible happened to our island. seeing the destruction from the earthquake and the tsunami in japan is so scary and sad. my heart goes out to the people there. it's sad too because since my school is so diverse there are a ton of students here from japan who had family lost from the destruction in japan :( please continue to keep those people in your prayers.
all in all, it was quite the adventure. looking back it's a little funny thinking about my multiple freak outs. but it's whatever :) i'm happy to be safe. i'm happy to have such wonderful friends. i'm happy to have a loving family. i'm happy that all is well in laie.
xoxo
L
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