6:03 AM: I awoke to the sound of my cell phone ringing. I’m usually up by 7 to go jogging (Marmot, I am working on my 8 minute mile for the 5K, mahalo), but I’d had a particularly late night the previous evening (don’t ask, not important) and so I rolled over and answered.
It was my mother.
“Jess, there is a tsunami coming. What are you going to do about this?”
First, I hate to have some fun at my mother’s expense, (no wait, who are we kidding?) but this wasn’t the first time she had called to tell me there was a tsunami coming. The last time she did so, I was living in Seattle in Queen Anne, which happened to be on the highest hill neighborhood in the fine state of Washington. I literally couldn’t have gotten to higher ground if I tried. So I did then what anyone would do, I turned on the TV to get the news about the tsunami. Then I checked the internet. Nothing. I called my friends to see if they’d heard anything. Nothing. No one in Seattle to this day knew anything about this phantom tsunami. And don’t get me started on the whole Mount Saint Helen’s smoking ash incident.
So perhaps you will better understand my reply: “Mom. It is six in the morning here.”
Second, what do you mean, what am I going to do about this? As if somehow I can prevent this? I imagined myself walking down the water’s edge, banging a staff and yelling at the oncoming waves “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”
But before I can really get snarky, a siren starts going off. Not an ambulance siren or anything mundane like that. It’s a god awful, blaring, get under your beds because nuclear atomic flesh eating zombies are coming your way and not even Bruce Campbell can save you now, kinda of siren. I sighed and told my mother I’d have to call her back. I turned on the news and yes, my mother was right. We were due to be hit by a tsunami at 11:37.
I’m not much of a panicker. There is someone in our family who does enough of that for all of us (Gatsby, obviously I’m looking at you). I’m more like my Dad. I’m a planner. So I watched the news until I figured out what I need to know. For me, it broke down into three areas: Evacuation, Safety, and Provisions.
EVACUATION: There was a map on screen showing the evacuation areas. Most of these areas were along the coastline, naturally, since that is where the tsunami wave would hit. Waikiki was in one of these areas. However, only individuals staying on the third floor of a building or below had to evacuate. I was on the 22nd floor, the highest floor in my condo building. Score one for Snarky, I wasn’t going to have to evacuate (yes, I was imagining Super Dome like conditions) nor was I going to be one of those unfortunates stranded on their roofs while the National Guard went around and rescued them and people watching CNN wondered, who are these morons?
SAFETY: Every other sentence out of the weatherman’s mouth (and clearly, this man had been up all night working on the tsunami warnings because he was wearing jeans and an excited, but tired expression) was “please do not attempt to surf the tsunami waves.” And I thought, what kind of moron would try to surf a tsunami wave? Surely, everyone has more or less heard or seen some of the devastation such waves cause all over the world? Why would you ever got on a board and try to surf it? And then the weatherman cut to scenes of the Coast Guard (in boats and helicopters) ordering said morons out of the water, either surfing or swimming.
Safety wasn’t going to be an issue for me. I wasn’t going within a 1000 yards of the ocean because I actually know what the word tsunami means. Mahalo.
PROVISIONS: This was the area of greatest concern because the two anchors and the weatherman took turns instructing us on what we need, potentially 5-7 days worth of food and water. First, we were to fill our bathtubs with water and then we were to turn our fridges all the way up in the event we lost power. I dutifully went and filled the bathtub, then I noted how disgusting the water was. So I drained it, scrubbed the tub, and then refilled it. It still looked like last resort water to me.
8:12 AM: Here was the rationale with the food. Had the tsunami hit as predicted, an 8 foot wave (which doesn’t sound very big, I mean, c’mon I saw sharks bigger than this), would hit Waikiki. An 8 foot wave of ocean would actually be quite dangerous and had the potential to knock out roads, powers, and systems for days. This I wholeheartedly believed because last year during the power outage, my building’s solution to an outage that lasted over 14 hours was to give everyone lightsticks and free drinks at the bar. So yes, I believed that the island of Oahu could be rocked back to the Stone Age for 5-7 days. Water I had. Food I did not. I went off in search of food (There was still well over three hours before the wave was due to hit us), and to my dismay, so did everyone else as all the lines to every major food store, gas station, McDonalds and Sushi Buffet were around the block. So I kept walking further and further until I saw a desolate looking liquor store with a blink neon light from the sixties that indicated it was open. I poked my head in. The liquor store guy smiled down at me, one gold tooth flashing in his leathery visage. “Everyone needs booze during a tsunami,” he said with a grin.
Having just eyed his ample snack selection, I was actually thinking: “everyone needs pork rinds during a tsunami.” So I bought: chips, salsa, a Snickers Bar, a bag of Peanut M&Ms, sour cream and onion Pringles, Cool Ranch Doritos and a package of Oreos (non Double Stuff, but beggars can’t be choosers). It was enough food to last me at least 3 days, then I could forage for food and eat exotic birds or whatever.
9:38 AM: I more or less spent the rest of the time until the tsunami was due to hit watching the weatherman and g-chatting my mother down off the ledge. I’d left the balcony door wide open so I heard the policemen driving around in their cruisers advising people to go indoors. At 10:00 AM, whomever is in charge of oncoming tsunami damage control announced their plan to to shut down all the major routes into Waikiki. I started to feel a little bit like Will Smith in “I am Legend.” The major arteries into the city would be empty and the zoo animals would run loose and I’d get to hunt them. The Honolulu Zoo had flamingos. I’d always wondered what a flamingo would taste like. Instead I opened up the chips and salsa and went to town.
10:00 AM: True to their word, law enforcement closed the road and sounded another siren. Oh good. Was pretty certain at this point my mother was hyperventilating. I got up and peered out the window. It looked like this. I was quite skeptical. I was expecting dark skies, torrid wind gusts, or a bell ringing atop a Buddhist temple in the movie 2012. I had my way with the Oreos. This was the one hour, the hour of waiting, where I actually felt a little apprehension, a little adrenaline. Sure it was sunny, but I kept waiting for the Seventh Seal darkness and gloom to descend upon us.
11:00 AM: The weatherman was quite excited. They’d set up a live cam on a harbor in Maui. The tsunami was due to hit Maui first and work its way up the island chain to us on Oahu. The weatherman was very excited about what looked like a whole lot of nothing. He kept referring to dramatic changes in the tide levels. I just saw a lot of rocks and some brownish red water. This was the moment I realized the tsunami was going to be a dud. I opened up the Pringles to celebrate.
11:37 AM: The sun was shining brilliantly and though the weatherman seems a little defeated, but he keeps stressing what a historical, meteorological event this is. He sounds a smidge defensive. I look outside. The surf did look a little rough, I guess. I broke into the Pop Tarts to celebrate properly and informed my mother she could breathe again. She informed me under no circumstances was I to go in the water or the near it, kind of a funny concept actually considering I was on an island and staying at Waikiki Beach.
(This is the extent of the waves and the coast guard helicopter)
12:20 PM: The weather alert people at the tsunami prevention were trying to save face. Better safe than sorry. And you know what? I completely agreed with them on the whole ounce of prevention theory. Having studied the law for three years (and people watched my whole life), I’d come to the conclusion that people were morons and if the weather people hadn’t put the fear of god in us all, people would have been out in the surf swimming and surfing and then there actually would have been loss of life. (And oh believe me, in Chile where the earthquake hit that caused all of this alarm in Hawaii, there was a staggering amount of loss of life). So I was not going to be mad at the weather alert people. This was just silly.
2:10 PM: The all clear signal sounded and people went back to walking their travel Kleenex-sized pets in the park across from my place. Now, my mother had expressly forbid me to go near the water, but the weather alert experts had given the all clear. I weighed their opinion against my mother’s, then I went out to explore down at Ala Moana. Now this was cool. The water looked more dramatic down there, grayish and green and swirling with debris. The harbor looked swollen, both with water and boats, I’d never seen so many boats moored in the marina before. In the park, more birds than I’d ever seen were grounded and hunkered down in the grass. I felt like an extra in “The Birds” and made a point to tread carefully lest I step on one. Finally, the harbor inlet was full of fish that were not usually there. I knew this because I jogged there every night and liked to look over the edge and watch the herons pick off fish. Now there were brightly colored tropical fish, including some large angel fish. They looked confused. So again, nothing dramatic, some cool, but subtle shifts down at Ala Moana, but I still I felt like turning cartwheels in the grass. I didn’t have to evacuate or drink any dodgy water from my tub. Win win.
(Al
5:12 PM: Decided to celebrate my miraculous survival of the tsunami at the 31.99 crab leg and prime rib buffet over the Oceanarium. The Oceanarium looks just like the tank at the New England Aquarium. There I pretty much ate my weight in crab legs, oysters, and sushi. You hate me. That’s fine.
6:18 PM: The sunset was one of the strangest I’d ever seen and it was certainly one that bears mentioning here just so I can post some pictures. The clouds were funnel shaped with the sun streaming down and people were out in droves, lined up on walls and rocks to watch it. It was one of the prettiest ones I can remember.
So this is how I came to survive the February 27th, 2010 Tsunami. It was tough, subsisting on Oreos and crab legs, but I managed.
And here’s a fun parting vignette. Check out this t-shirt. Baller, right?
A few days prior to the tsunami warning, I had ventured out for 10 cent buffalo wings, Olympic hockey, and trivia at a local watering hole. Three gentlemen visiting from down South were gracious enough to let me join their team. We won and there was a really nice gift basket for our team, including a gift certificate to Haleiwa t-shirts, which the guys told me I should take (because I got the final question). So I did and a few days after the tsunami I saw this shirt. Limited edition. Entirely free. 1/3rd of the proceeds going to Chile earthquake victims. And as I walked around Waikiki in it, I was stopped by people of all ages and general attractiveness, all inquiring about where I’d gotten such an awesome t-shirt because the ones they were hawking at the souvenir stands were so cheesy. So basically, I was cool for like, a good twenty minutes.
And I know you’re all dying to know what the final trivia question was.
Category: Sports
Question: The only Yankee to win both Rookie of the Year and MVP, this all-star catcher was killed in a plane crash in 1979.
Answer: (will be posted in next blog should you need it)
Why Snarky knows this: My Dad used to tell me stories about this catcher who helped kindle the Sox/Yankees feud in the 60's and 70's, he really had it in for Carlton Fisk. My Dad has just come out of the woods on a hiking trip when he heard this player had died and he was shocked.
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