Special Bulletin - Tsunami Warning

Thought I would do a special post about the tsunami. Thank you for all you people who have contacted us, worried about us.

Last night, we were almost ready to retire for the night, and I just happened to flip the TV to the channel guide where a guy continually talks about tides, waves, etc. He just happened to mention the earthquake in Japan, and mentioned the State of Hawaii was under a tsunami WATCH. We said..."what?".

So we flipped to CNN first, to hear about the earthquake, then decided to flip to the local channel to hear what was going on with this tsunami.

Bottom line, they didn't expect the tsunami to hit until 2:59 a.m., and this is about 10:30 p.m. I guess it's very difficult to predict it's size and potential damage. About a half hour to an hour later, they upgraded it to a tsunami WARNING...meaning, it had great potential to happen.

They have very good and orderly evacuation procedures, and we were to check the front of the phone book to see if we were in a potential flood area. We were!

So we packed up our stuff (everything), threw it in the car, and headed for higher ground. We were probably a little premature in the timing, but hey, at least we had our spot staked out. We didn't have to go far. We crossed the main road and followed a lesser travelled road that was continually uphill. Even the main road is uphill from where we are staying.

It was NOT a very fun night, only because the car was so uncomfortable. Have you ever tried to sleep in a Mustang? We had the radio on periodically to update us. And the sirens would go off every hour, so even if we hadn't heard about it on the TV, the sirens would certainly have made us question what was going on.

This is where we hung out for several hours. When we went back there to get a picture, it stunk like a garbage dump. There was some debris lying around. I guess it stinks more during the heat of the day than at night. I don't know...but we would have been safe there.

We heard there was very little damage, if any, on Kauai, but we had to wait until they felt we were totally clear of waves following the original one. I guess Maui and the Big Island got hit a little more, but not too serious. At about 7:30 a.m., we got the all clear, and they opened the roads. So we came back here and unpacked, as if nothing happened.

I went to bed for about 4 hours. Our plans for the day were somewhat nixed, but that's OK. There are lots of others things we can do nearby...or not.

So, chalk it up to experience. It's something that would never happen to us in Southern Ontario!