It isn't every day that one goes to Hawaii and faces a tsunami threat. But that's what happened to us on February 27 when, for the first time in 16 years, authorities issued a state-wide evacuation of all coastal areas after the massive earthquake that hit Chile.
The evening before, the "warning" was just a "watch." I figured it would remain that way, at least for us, considering we were on a part of the big island that faces west, which is away from the direction the waves would come from. But the next morning sirens blared and a security guard knocked on our hotel door, telling us to board buses and head for higher ground.
The guard told us to leave everything but personal valuables behind but I couldn't help but envisage a hotel room half full of water with our battered belongings strewn about when we returned. Despite that I only took my wallet, keys, some books and our video camera and stashed my work laptop and some other items in the room's safe. If my work laptop got ruined, so what.
My wife and mother-in-law grabbed some things too but most of what we took along was to keep Audrey and Grace protected from the sun, fed and entertained. We were shooting in the dark though because we had no idea where we'd end up. The image circling about in my head was of a make-shift shelter in a deserted parking lot surrounded by fields of lava rock, with us trying to keep two little girls from baking in the sun. Staff would come by and ration us food and we'd wait and wait until finally the threat subsided, exhausted and unsure whether our hotel would still be standing when we returned.
But that image was completely wrong - almost as wrong as the tsunami researchers were about their predictions of widespread disaster. We were re-located to a sister hotel 10 minutes inland that had inviting pools and water slides, an outdoor restaurant-bar and plenty of shade and seating. Granted it was crowded with more than 1,000 other evacuees and we were fed hamburgers and hot dogs for breakfast, but it wasn't a bad place to be evacuated to.
By 2:30pm the tsunami threat had been dismissed - the interesting part was, when we returned to our coastal resort, no employees showed up to serve the returning guests. Apparently "tsunami warning" = "vacation" for the locals. It was all my wife and I could do to find two bowls of macaroni and cheese to feed Audrey and Grace - fortunately we encountered the food manager on our quest and she obliged. It was the only complimentary gesture on our entire trip.
I don't want to make light of the fact that there was a very real tsunami warning and I'm glad we took precautions. And Hawaiian authorities reacted in a very organized manner.
Now that I've made that disclosure, I think the lessons are - don't worry about tsunamis when you visit Hawaii because they are rare. And if you're in Hawaii and a tsunami threat occurs, bring your swimsuit and ID because you'll likely be evacuated to a place with a pool and a bar.
