So let me set this story up by saying we had been traveling ALL day on Thursday and had no idea what was happening in the world. We hadn’t heard a word about the earthquake in Japan….nothing.
When we checked into our hotel around 4pm on Thursday the 10th, nothing was said to us except Aloha. We had no idea. We ate dinner, walked around and went to bed early (see previous post). We did turn on the TV when getting into bed, but left it on HBO to watch The Blind Side. Asleep by 8pm……
Next thing I know, it is almost midnight and this loud siren woke me up out of a dead sleep. Then I hear the hotel PA system announcing that we were under a Tsunami warning (suddenly that ocean front hotel room didn’t seem so great). We were instructed that the hotel could withstand a Tsunami as long as you were on a high enough floor….which we were!! They told us to stay in our rooms and do not come out until we were instructed that it was clear. The tsunami was set to hit at around 3:45am. All roads in and out of Waikiki Beach were shut down. Great, what if something really devastating happens?? All we had were 2 big bottles of water and a bag of Jolly Ranchers left over from the plane. How do you ration out Jolly Ranchers??? All kidding aside, I was scared. I nudged Steve to see if he was hearing all of this….and yes it had gotten his attention too. Luckily Kari was still sleeping soundly and would continue to do so until the next morning. Thank God….she would have flipped out!!
So our first night in Hawaii consisted of sirens and PA announcements every hour or so. We didn’t really see any waves and we sure weren’t hanging out on our patio looking for them. Oahu got lucky and was spared the really big waves. They did get some waves, but no damage was done. Thank goodness!!! Around 4am Hawaii time, my cell phone started to blow up with text messages from home checking to see if we were okay. So I spent the next hour texting and facebooking so everyone would know we were okay. It was really touching to see how many people cared about our safety.
Around 8am the next morning, we were allowed to leave our room and go downstairs to have breakfast. No damage was done to the hotel and they quickly set up so they could carry on business as usual.
I snapped these pictures of the ocean the morning after. You can see all the boats parked way out. We were next to a harbor and I guess they moved all the boats out for safety.
The calm….
Look at all those boats….
So we can now check off the made it through a Tsunami on the Bucket List. And we even have the T-shirt to prove it….
Until next time…..
No comments:
Post a Comment