Today I was woken up at 4:30am. I was less than thrilled, but when your phone rings at such an ungodly hour, you answer it. Usually with a bit of trepidation. I'm sure it's natural to immediately think..."who died". I know I did.
But it was only Danielle. And she was only telling me about the impending doom about to be wrought on our little island courtesy of the Pacific tsunami baring down on us. In 7 hours.
Seriously. Seven hours. God knows why she had to wake me up that early to prepare.
In fairness, the tsunami sirens did go off at 6:00, so I would have been up early anyway. And it was nice that I had some extra time to prepare before the evacuation took place. But it certainly does make one think. You always hear --- "if your house was on fire and you only had time to grab one thing, what would it be?" It was almost sureal to be in that situation this morning. I had a good look around me. Nothing seemed all that pressing right off. I knew I would be leaving my house with my laptop in one hand and my passport in the other. But what else was really necessary to live? In the end I grabbed a suitcase and started filling it with stuff. A couple framed photos of me and Pete. My camera. My birth certificate. Pete's soon to be wedding ring. A couple of photo albums. My makeup. (ha!) Grudgingly I slid my work laptop in there as well. I did give some thought as to extra clothes to wear just in case water was going to wipe out my house, and I packed my toothbrush as well. Wouldn't want to be all nasty and smelly if I ended up having to live with friends for a few days.
After waiting an hour in line to fill up my car with gas (and if you know me, you'll know that my car pretty much resides at an empty tank...I detest fuel pumping!), it was a short drive up the hill to my friends house for a relaxing day of alternately sitting on the couch listening to the weather updates and standing on the lanai looking for any signs of change in the waves far below. Oh, and watching the wales frolic. They were going batty out there today.
As you can see from the photo above, we had a great vantage point over the ocean - if a wave was coming, we would notice!
But as you can also see....nothing ever showed up on our side. The windward side of the island received some six foot swells, and the Big Island was hit a tad more aggressively. But good old Lahaina town was snug as a bug. Evacuation for nothing.
Although....I would do it again if I heard the sirens again tomorrow morning. Better safe than sorry. I'm not even wanting to mess around with a wave which has a crest that can last 15 minutes or more. Good grief. That's just freaky.
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