A Tsunami Story

A Tsunami Story was Originally Posted on March 13, 2011 by lavarock

As you know, with the tragic events in Japan, a tsunami developed and headed across the Pacific towards small islands, Hawaii and eventually the western coast of the mainland.

Many people here in the islands have relatives, friends or ties to Japan and recently many Japanese have visited the islands on vacation. That was quite evident as I traveled during these few days. Our hearts go out to all affected by the quake and aftermath.

In Hawaii, we are familiar with tsunamis and have evacuation plans and maps in the front of all phone books. Visitors here sometimes comment on that and worry. We usually tell them that although we have loss of life with a few of them, we now have a fairly good notification system and time to prepare. If a quake happens in Alaska, Japan, Chile or elsewhere in our radius, the wave would come from a different direction. Our time to react differs because of the distances involved and different notification buoys are involved.

In the case of Chilean quake, we had twice the notification time than this one in Japan. While not all quakes generate tsunamis, we have to start preparing anyway. Because of topology, small islands may not be affected as much as larger ones, and as you know, I live on a big island.

Our own state has many earthquakes and recently many in one day. If we have a large quake here, we may have little to no time to react. In the case of our 6.8 and 6.2 quakes a few years back, no tsunami was generated, as I understand because the quake happened deep under water and was too close to land. Still we are every wary that we could have a large quake and immediately want to move away from the shore. Some times just moving a thousand feet or so could move us safely away from the water, however some of that thousand feet may be up a cliff.

My friend had been over on Oahu for more than a week having just had a hip replacement. I and another friend have been caring for the dogs and farm and coffee business. We had a litter of 7 puppies just a week or so earlier and a second litter of puppies which were just born, so things were hectic. We had to keep the two mothers apart, as they get quite protective of their puppies. One mother really wants to drag her pups out of the litter box into the closet, on the bed or under the house. She waits for you to turn your back before she sneaks away with them.

We are a diverse state with multiple islands of various sizes and populations. Although the Big Island is large enough to contain all the other islands, it has relatively few residents compared with Oahu. Thus Kaiser decided to have their main hospital and care facility on Oahu and care centers around the rest of the state. For doctor visits you go to the local clinic. In an emergency you go to the local hospital. If you require care such a hip replacement, Kaiser will airlift you to Oahu, where their extensive equipment and resources are. Even when I needed an MRI, Kaiser bought me a regular airline ticket round trip to Oahu for the test.

In my friends case, she had the operation and at release time needed someone to accompany her back home as she has to use a walker for a few months. Kaiser bought me a round trip ticket to Oahu for March 12th at 8am and returning 5pm (times approximate). As I was getting ready to go to bed on Thursday for my early morning flight, I heard about the possibility of a tsunami. Watching the news I realized that if we had a substantial wave, my flight would be cancelled. I stayed up until about 3am as they were thinking that we might get spared. I went to sleep knowing that I would only get an hour and a half rest.

When I woke up, there was no information yet from Hawaiian Air as to whether their flights were still scheduled. I headed to the airport, getting there after 6am, perhaps an hour and 45 minutes before flight time. I had printed boarding passes for my outbound and our return trip the night before. Since I only had an envelope with papers, I could go right to security and the gate. The gate was empty but by boarding time, the plane would be mostly full.

After a 30-minute ride, I arrived in Honolulu and went to the Kaiser shuttle pickup point. A quick rie and I was at the hospital. I found my friend and we were able to get her discharged just after lunch. Because of the tsunami, we were able to book an earlier flight. A cab ride brought us back to the Honolulu airport. She was in a wheelchair in the Airport and as she went through security, she received a more than necessary manual pat down. We headed to the gate and awaited our flight.

We were boarded first and asked to gate-check her walker. It was tagged and we left it at the end of the ramp next to the airplane. When we arrived at Kona she got back in an airport wheelchair and they helped her down the zigzag ramp from the plane to the ground. It used to be that wheelchair bound people were taken from the plane via a forklift!

When I asked for the walker at planeside, I was told they were busy with other wheelchair people and they would send it to baggage claim. Baggage claim never got it and we waited at least 45 minutes before borrowing a walker from the airline and heading home. The walker appears to have shown up later in the evening and the airline asked if we wanted to come pick it up… ahh, no. They can deliver it just like they do with lost luggage. So they tell us it will be here between 8pm and midnight. At 11pm I went to bed in the study and my friend I think had gone to bed earlier.

At 8am this morning we get a call that the delivery service needs directions and they will deliver the thing in an hour. A half hour later the driver called. He had a flat and was going to call another driver and we will get the walker very soon. At 2pm we were still waiting and I think it was finally delivered after 4pm. At least she got it. It was something like $138 and was brand new with tags still on it.

Naturally I left out much else that happened as you can tell, this was a very long 24 hours.