Ok, so tsunami warnings don’t exactly make life a little bit more fun, but they did make our Saturday morning quite a bit more exciting as we tried to figure out if we were outside of the evacuation zone. Turns out that we were out of the evacuation zone according to the phone book, but just barely, which made us wonder how generous the zone is and what if it was a “little” off? Should we be worried? We did what we could and prepared extra water and food in case we were out of power for a few days. And then we sat around and waited with the rest of the islands, for what turned out to be a much smaller event than they anticipated.
What did make the tsunami warning a little bit more fun were all the friends and family we heard from across the country, reaching out over phone, text, and Facebook to make sure we were safe. Ahh…we felt loved! Since we had to stay home, Jim did what he did best in times of emergency and made some delicious blueberry waffles, and certainly waffles make tsunami warnings a little bit more fun. Not to mention whales. Prepared with our binoculars for some wave action from our stadium seating of the ocean, we did have a chance to watch whales surfacing and flitting around in the water for a couple of hours.
Technology also makes potential disasters a little bit more fun. We have no cable television and no batteries for our radio, so our connection to what was happening on the island was through our computer. We listened to KBIG broadcast on the web and watched scenes of the Hilo Bay Front over the Internet as well. We were able to update our Facebook status to give immediate relief to anyone who was worried. And having this technology really helped us feel connected to what was happening locally and nationally.
And one more shout out to technology: I truly appreciated how incredibly lucky we are to have the detection and warning systems in place through the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. The fact that we had so much warning to prepare for an event like this made it seem surreal, especially in the aftermath of the Haiti disaster and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.