I had always wondered how it would feel to actually have one of those tsunami warning sirens go off and have to react to it. It turns out that it wasn't the chaotic, horrifying experience I imagined. We'd had an interesting vacation with bad weather for part of it and the volcano acting up. We had taken our manta ray dive and a zip line tour and had a lot of down time that we really needed.
Thursday night we were already packing to go home when the sirens went off. My hubby got our instructions from the lobby. Our orders were to go about 1/2 to 1 mile uphill to the high school or the Wallmart/Safeway parking lot. We headed to the high school, but it was locked, chained and dark (it was opened soon after.) We headed closer to the airport avoiding lines at gas stations and settled down with several other cars in the Home Depot parking lot around 11pm. We listened to the radio and napped. The tsunami was supposed to arrive around 3:30am. We listened and waited - there was a problem. Everyone had been evacuated from the area that we wanted information about. We eventually heard that the expected 3-6' waves were what happened and "the all clear" was supposed to happen around 7am. The Home Depot opened around 6am for a bathroom stop. We never actually got the all clear before we got off the island, but the police barriers were moved back so traffic could move some. We had breakfast from Safeway (which I heard was an all night tailgate luau) and went to the airport (which was surprising normal.) We were too exhausted (and sore-butted) to sleep in the airplane so by the time we'd arrived home we had had only about 4 hours of sleep in the last 40. But we had a great story to tell and we had always been safe.
Things to learn:
1. Trust that the local emergency agency has plans that should work even if they are a little less than cushy
2. Look ahead and be prepared. Keep your water bottles filled. Keep track of your prescriptions. Don't let the gas tank get too low.
3. Roll with the punches and keep your sense of humor.
4. The difference between the Japanese tsunami and ours was distance - we had time. Nevertheless, don't waste time getting to high ground.
5. We have seen God's power, can His love be any less?
1 comment:
Great example of what to do when you are on vacation. Most people don't even think about the "what if" things that could happen on a vacation. Always be prepared, get organized and stop prcrastinating about emergency stuff. Super and concise list of what to do!
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