Third Day in Paradise

The telephone rings at 5:00 am. "Dude, they're going to evacuate. We gotta get out of here. Will pick you up in 20 minutes." Nathan, who was staying at Hale Koa Hotel about a block away from us, made the urgent call to Don. Half asleep we gathered some clothes, our flight information, computer and whatever else we thought we'd need in case we didn't make it back. Nathan's car was very small, so we only took the necessities. We'd left before the official evacuation took place. As we were driving to Scoffield Barracks where Nathan was stationed, we heard the tsunami alarms sounding throughout the city. They sounded just like in the war movies that sounded the air raid alarms. It was very unnerving. Roads, highways, stores and beaches were closed immediately after. Thank goodness we left early. The "wave" was expected to hit Waikiki at 11:30 am with a wave anywhere from 10' to 60'. Our condo was 1/2 block from the beach, so we thought it would be best to go to Nathan's house and wait it out. Our plans of spending a day at the beach and then a luau with Nathan, Laura and Jaycee vanished. We were, however, thankful we got to spend time with their family.

The evacuation was lifted by the afternoon. We had watched the news reports which said they miscalculated the intensity of the tsunami, which only got to 2.8 feet. On Coconut Island, however, it was reported the whole island was submerged. (For those of you who remember Gilligan's Island, Coconut Island is where it was filmed.)

We had dinner at a local pizza joint on North Shore which was great. I'm sure it wouldn't have compared to a luau, but it was still good nonetheless. Nathan then drove us back to the condo where we said goodbyes. I could tell it was quite emotional for father and son.

Don and I decided to walk down to the beach to see our last Waikiki sunset. Although the sky was full of clouds, the lights of the surrounding buildings made it a spectacular sight. We walked out on to the break and looking back at the beach we could actually see how high the tsunami "wave" had gone. 2.8' doesn't sound like a large amount of water, but if it had risen any higher, it would have surely gone into some of the hotels. We learned quite a bit about tsunamis. For instance, it's not a "wave" per se. It's more like "rivers" that run in and out, each gathering more force than the last. It was actually fascinating watching the live cams. It was something that we would have never experienced; and I'm glad we can say we survived a tsunami - lol.