KATHLEEN 808 POSSIBLE TSUNAMI

Sirens
I'm sure Kathleen and **** are on top of things. They are at sea level... on low ground, so they will have been hearing the civil defense sirens for a few hours now. The locals who live in Hawaii understand these sirens and know what to do. It's the tourists that may be very confused, not knowing what the sirens mean and/or what they should be doing.

Hotels in Waikiki are going into Emergency mode. There is no way they can move all the tourists in Waikiki to higher ground... there isn't enough higher ground on Oahu for everyone to move too (overall, Oahu is quite flat). So the hotels are going to be moving all their guests to the 6th floor and above. No one will be on the lower floors.

At this point (11pm Hawaiian time/1:00pm PST) the island has 4 hours to prepare. They do not know how powerful the waves are going to be by the time they get to the island but because of where they are starting and the direction they are coming in, there is absolutely nothing to stop them before they hit the islands. Now normally, you would think of it as a wave that hits an island from one side and travels inland (all on one side).... meaning if you go to the other side of the island, you'd be safe, right? Wrong in this case. The tsunami is a long long wave, coming in at 800 km/hour... when it first hits (since the Hawaiian islands will be the first land that it hits), the wave surrounds the island(s) so there is no one side being hit first... it is surrounded by all sides and the water is forced inland. That is where some small islands can actually be totally engulfed. Hawaiian Islands are not THAT small, but if the waves are big enough and strong enough, then the outer edges/beach front and for about a mile inland can be underwater around 3am this morning.

The earthquake in Japan was huge... the largest one ever recorded in the history of Japanese earthquakes and they are used to having had some dillies. This is a country that is very, very prepared for earthquakes and within minutes, they now have severe infrastructure damage and billions of dollars of damaged buildings. This doesn't account for peoples homes/cars/property. Not sure if anyone saw the CNN coverage of the tsunami coming in and just pushing mud, buildings, vehicles across what was mostly farmland... but it was unreal.

Hawaii is my second home... a lot of us Canucks feel that since it is so fast and close to get to from the West Coast of Canada. I have many, many friends who go there, as well as who live there... and this one is shaking me up badly.

Cheryl

Kathleen808 said:

You're the best!
Hi My Friends,
Thank you so much for thinking about us and saying some prayers. We were evacuated last night as we live 4 houses from the beach. We took our cars to gas up and got water around 9:00. We packed our 3 cars and watched the TV for a number of hours. Fire trucks, police cars, etc... came through the neighborhood a number of times with sirens blaring and on loud speakers, "Evacuate, evacuate, tsunami warning. Everyone must leave their houses!" We headed up the hill to our friends' house. They have been our spot for tsunamis. The first wave was set to hit at 3:00am. We got to our friends' house at 1:30am. We wanted to let Katie (our daughter with special needs) sleep as long as possible. I didn't think she would go back to sleep after we moved her. The good news is we all fell asleep on a mattress on the floor at our friends at about 2:00am. So, today is a beautiful day in Hawaii. No school. The tide is still crazy going in and out every 15 minutes. It is nuts to watch. The coral reef is covered with water, then exposed, covered, then exposed.
We'll be unpacking today and trying to enjoy the day off.

Hope everyone else is OK today.

Aloha,
Kathleen

Glad to see everything
Glad to see everything worked out well.

herdizziness said:

Santa Cruz
We lost about 5 boats to sinking and a lot were damaged from boats running into one another, and the one man washed out to sea was in Crescent City along with a few boats there I think.
Winter Marie

Washed out to sea?
Ok... not to make light of this, but how the heck, after all these warnings and the television coverage of the devastation that happened in Japan... and the detailed reporting of where the tsunami was going to hit next, almost down to the very minute... how the heck could this man get washed out to sea? Was he not paying attention? Was he being totally irresponsible? The warnings were everywhere... DO NOT GO DOWN TO THE BEACH! So often, people lose all common sense and they want to go down to see the big wave come in (duh! No patience for stupidity)... but it sounded like people had it together this time and were actually listening to the warnings and paying attention.

So how the heck did someone on the mainland manage to get himself washed out to sea??