Last night, March 10, 2011, I was sitting unsuspectingly behind my computer. My twitterstream was turned off and the TV was also not on a channel with news broadcasts. Nice and quiet you might think.. all the way up until my mother called me all of the sudden from the Netherlands at around 9.30 (local time): if I had seen the news yet? Nope, so my mother told me what happened, that there was a huge earthquake in Japan and that there was a great possibility of a tsunami coming to Hawaii. And at the moment my mother said ‘tsunami’, the Hawaii Civil Defense system announced on TV that there was a tsunami warning for Hawaii.
There are several different levels in case of a storm or some other natural phenomenon, such as a tsunami: advisory, watch or a warning. An advisory basically means something could happen, a watch basically means chances are greatly increased and a warning means that it is imminent or might even already occur.
The announcement spoke of a warning, which basically meant that everyone had to prepare as soon as possible and find higher grounds if they were in one of the evacuation areas. Either way, people should always be prepared here, we can get almost everything over here: hurricanes, volcano eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, mudslides, floods, etc etc.
Since our household is prepared, and since we do not live in a dangerzone, we didn’t have to worry right away but either way I have to say that I had some kind of feeling of anxiety last night, especially when the sirens went off every hour before the tsunami would come. I can say it is a very surreal thing: you are waiting for a disaster, you know it is coming and you also know when but you have no idea how bad it would be. You cannot do much else but wait. I couldn’t help to think for a bit about how people would feel if a movie, such as Deep Impact, would actually be happening for real. In such a situation you cannot do much different but wait.
During my phone conversation with my mother, first I watched CNN for a while, to see the damages and ravage in Japan. I was shocked by the images that I saw: flooding, fires, debris and ravage all over. But since we had a possibility of our own disaster, I soon switched to the local tv channels, which were reporting widely about the coming tsunami.
The first thing I noticed on TV were the amount of people who went to supermarkets and gas stations to stock up, apparently it has been ‘a madhouse’ (literal quote from the TV channel) in some locations. More than once I was wondering why those people were not prepared for a possible disaster. Even if just a minimal preparation. I was quite disappointed by this, especially because we have so much risks over here. We’re basically just a small dot in the middle of a huge ocean. If there is a disaster here, it wouldn’t surprise me if it would take several days before we can get any help from the outside.
I also read more and more messages on Twitter from people who had left the danger areas and searched for higher grounds. Either with friends or in one of the many evacuation areas. Twitter was running quite fast with messages from the people in Hawaii, many used the ‘hash-tag’ #hitsunami, and there was also a new website opened with a twitter-feed, a live TV stream and other information which could be important.
In the meantime I also went down to my mother-in-law, to check if she knew about the impending tsunami (she usually goes to bed late), but she heard the sirens and knew all about it as well. When I was talking to her, I thought to myself that the earthquake which caused this had a power of 8.9 on the Richter scale. However, the previous (destructive) tsunamis were caused by earthquakes of a much lower scale. In 1946, for example, there was a tsunami which was up to 55 feet high, caused 159 deads and damages with an amount of over $10 million. This could become pretty scare.
My wife Michelle was still working, and even though I was not really worried about her safety (mostly because she worked outside the danger areas and was much higher than the minimum advised safe heights), I did worry a bit if she would come home or not that night. It was, obviously, possible that they would ask her to stay to assist in any emergency situation. Fortunately this turned out not to be true, she almost had to stay because someone called in sick (right..) but someone else was also available, thankfully.
After all this it was mostly waiting, waiting for that what would come. I tried to play a game on my computer but became distracted a lot by the television whenever something new was announced. They spoke of waves which could reach a height of 6 to 10 feet and you have to imagine these are not really ‘waves’ but more like a river that comes towards us. Hawaii has seen worse waves, sometimes even 15 to 30 feet high, but those are ‘normal’ waves, the ones that break easily before (and sometimes on) our shores. The tsunami waves are not really waves, it would be more like the sea level was rising up to 6-10 feet, so if you live at sea level, everything at the first floor would’ve been gone.
After a while, we received the message that the first measurements of the waves at Wake Island and the island Saipan were in. Respectively these were about 1.6 feet and 2.6 feet. Not that much, but it was also said that these islands were not in the line of the tsunami and that this caused smaller readings. About an hour later the first readings from Midway, an island a lot closer to the main islands of Hawaii, came in.
However, before we heard those readings, a retired geology professor from the University of Hawaii, who now worked as volunteer adviser for the city&county of Honolulu, told us on TV that an earlier tsunami had waves up to 30 feet high on Oahu (our island) while the readings at Midway were ‘only’ 6.2 feet. It turned out that the waves now measured at Midway were about feet. That kind of made me think because it was not that much difference with the other tsunami. The predictions from the tsunami warning center were still about 6-10 feet.. so we still had to wait for what it would really be.
About an hour later, we came closer and closer to our turn to receive the tsunami. And even though I knew we were perfectly safe, I still felt some excitement running through my body.. it was really like a countdown to what would come.
Suddenly we noticed on TV how the sea levels had risen a bit and the first reactions on Twitter (me included) were like “is this everything?”. I shouldn’t say this, of course, but it was a bit disappointed. I think it was mostly the created tensions that caused this, we expected something much worse, some much more devastating. At the other hand everyone was relieved because, even though we were safe, there were still a lot of people who have their homes in the danger zones.
After the water rose for about 3 feet, we noticed how the water was slowly going away again, and kept going away. The reef was quite visible after a while and the water receded for several hundred yards… Was this what we were waiting for? If the water recedes like that, chances are that something very strong would come back, it still had to come back after all. And it did come back, but not in the manner a lot of people anticipated, the water came very slowly back. And this repeated itself for several times. It was a bit of a downer but, at the same time, also a big relief, especially for those in the danger zones.
I have to say it was very surreal to watch. You can see the many waves come, but all the water didn’t go back like it would normally do, instead it stayed ashore and it got a bit pushed up. And new waves brought even more water, which also stayed behind to push everything a bit more up. It didn’t get much higher than 3-3.5 feet on Oahu. We did hear several messages from Maui that the sea level rose 6 feet in some points. They also anticipated some damages there, but it would remain minor according to the predictions.
I decided after several hours watching it all that this would most likely all we would be able to see, and since it turned after 5 am, I decided to go to bed for a few hours.
This morning, when I woke up around 10-10.30 am, I checked right away how things were doing. It turned out that the tsunami warning was downgraded to an advisory at around 7.45 am, and about 45 minutes later they gave the ‘all clear’ signal, so people would know the danger was gone.
There was, thankfully, not much damage on our island. I didn’t hear much about it anyways, but I did read some stories about damages on both Maui and Big Island. The water seems to have gone ashore pretty easy on those islands, fortunately without any personal damages, it was only material. But when I look at the pictures below, I think the damage is pretty bad. Things might have ended pretty tragic if the people who live there did not evacuate.
By the way, I have to say I am a bit scared for when another tsunami comes. Not so much for myself or for the danger and damage that it could cause, but more in the sense of the casualties that might happen. Because there was another tsunami about a year ago that turned out to be not so bad, even less than this one, and still everyone got evacuated, I am afraid there will be some people next time who will think it would not be so dangerous after all, with all kinds of possible consequences. You could see some people still see in the danger areas last night on TV, and you can see the same on the various pictures and videos on the internet also. Personally I believe the government did a great job, but there are always people who will doubt this next time.
To close this whole thing, I added two (of the many) Youtube videos below as they were pretty interesting to watch. I have to add that I think it is really stupid of that guy in that one video to film at that point, he can consider himself lucky to live and tell.
