Post Tsunami-Saturday (to move, place, district)

[Lisa From Maui]

Saturday morning was horrible. Everyone was so afraid! Like it was the end of the world. The state gov't was saying... "We don't know how big the wave is gonna be. There's no way to predict it." I honestly think the Hawai'i gov't was doing a "cover your assets" and wanted to make sure no one would sue them for not getting the word out.

All the news stations were saying, "They are expecting MAJOR DAMAGE" throughout the pacific. The more they get people scared, the more people watch the news.

I turned off the local news (forget those people!!!) and started searching online. The wave that hit French Polynesia was 6 feet tall. The wave that hit Easter Island was about 5 feet tall. They didn't say that on the news. They only said stuff that would encourage people to panic.

The wave hit Maui at 11 am. It was low tide. I think the wave that hit us was like 4 feet tall. To put it in perspective... the wave brought the water level to high tide + 2 feet.

Hilo had reason to worry. The rest of the islands were worried because the state & the media were sensationalizing the whole thing. The sirens started to go off at 6am, and the wave hit at 11 am. They had 5 hours to get people off the beach. No one was hurt. What a total waste of a Saturday!!!

On a side note... I pray for the people in Chile. They did have serious damage. Nothing to laugh about... what happened there.

[DuvalGatorGirl]

Originally Posted by Lisa From Maui

The rest of the islands were worried because the state & the media were sensationalizing the whole thing. The sirens started to go off at 6am, and the wave hit at 11 am. They had 5 hours to get people off the beach. No one was hurt. What a total waste of a Saturday!!!

i do agree that it was a waste of a saturday, especially since it was my wedding anniversary and there were things i needed to do during the tsunami warning time frame. on the other hand, it's better to be safe than sorry. lest we forget the indian ocean tsunami of 2004.

[Lisa From Maui]

Safe, yes. Everyone was safe. They had 5 hours to clear the beaches. In our town, no one was 1/4 mile from the beach in the tsunami evacuation zones. You don't have to show me a photo of the Indian Ocean. I'm already all for safe.

What I find complete bizarre and a total waste of time is the panic that people buy into. The panic people create for themselves.

Remember Hurricane Felicia? Everyone was in a panic. Like the world was gonna end. As it turned out, I think we got 20 minutes of rain on the island.

DGG, hope you enjoyed your anniversary on Sunday and had a wonderful time w/ your sweetheart.

[DuvalGatorGirl]

i don't know why you're so up in arms about other peoples' response to immediate danger (panic). if they are in danger, of course they are gonna go run down to their nearest foodland... and everyone else too. it happens. it seems like people here live in complacency because of many near-misses, hence why no hurricane kit and the rushing to grocery stores and gas stations.

as far as the media goes, yes they hyperbolized the situation, but i find it outrageous that scientists have to defend themselves for trying to prevent the loss of lives. if they sat around passively and the tsunami turned out to be a bigger deal than expected, then perhaps all of waikiki and many international and local lives would have been lost.

"It's a key point to remember that we cannot under-warn. Failure to warn is not an option for us," said Dai Lin Wang, an oceanographer at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. "We cannot have a situation that we thought was no problem and then it's devastating. That just cannot happen."

[AFDDS]

So true....better safe than sorry!

[hothulamaui]

the news reports did not seem to incite people to panic. we have no true way to predict how large the wave will be. the state and civil authorities did would should have been done. would anyone be pissing about the evacuations had the wave been huge and we lost life and property? as it was not all people on all islands heard the sirens. there were several sirens on several islands that did not work.
we dodged a huge bullet and should be very thankful. as for the massive hurricane felicia that was headed our way with a direct hit of ALL the islands, we too should be very thankful we were lucky enough to just experience the outer band of rain from a storm that could have more devestating than iniki . "a waste of a saturday" keeping a population safe from possible catastrophe is hardly a waste of a sat.

[mokeanne]

Originally Posted by Lisa From Maui

Safe, yes. Everyone was safe. They had 5 hours to clear the beaches. In our town, no one was 1/4 mile from the beach in the tsunami evacuation zones. You don't have to show me a photo of the Indian Ocean. I'm already all for safe.

What I find complete bizarre and a total waste of time is the panic that people buy into. The panic people create for themselves.

Remember Hurricane Felicia? Everyone was in a panic. Like the world was gonna end. As it turned out, I think we got 20 minutes of rain on the island.

DGG, hope you enjoyed your anniversary on Sunday and had a wonderful time w/ your sweetheart.

IF you are even decently prepared, there's no need to panic. their panic comes from not knowing what to do. evidently there were tons of ppl running around like chickens.

we had a family take shelter at our house. the wife was freaking out. at the point where it's sit and wait... there's no use freaking out about it. it will or will not happen. panicking will change nothing, except your stress level. it prevents you from staying calm n affects your mental game, n it's really bad in front of kids.

[hotzcatz]

We didn't have any panic around here. Folks were all pretty calmly getting the last of their preparations done. Filling up water barrels, checking with the neighbors to see if they were prepared, etc. Perhaps since we are a remote and rural area we keep a higher level of preparedness than folks near towns and cities. It's a thirty mile trip to the nearest large town so we keep a weeks supply of things in our normal day to day living.

I thought the had an appropriate level of warning and there wasn't any sort of panic induced by the media. If anyone feels it was too much, well, there's always ear plugs, I guess. They did wait until six AM to sound the sirens even though they knew at 11PM the night before that a tsunami had been generated. My neighbor has an alert which comes to her cell phone so she called us before the sirens went off so at least we were woken up by the phone instead of the sirens.

[cynmkolohe]

I agree with hotzcatz. There was no sense of panic that I sensed, and I stayed tuned in via Facebook and Twitter for most Friday and Saturday. People were checking supplies and connecting with family members, but I never saw any one really in a state of panic.

I want as much information as the Tsunami Warning Center and Civil Defense can provide. I want to make decisions about my plan of action based on all available data.

[cynmkolohe]

Not quite sure about posting this and city-data TOS, but after a friend of mine wanted to vent about people criticizing the Civil Defense/Pacific Tsunami Warning Center's efforts this weekend, we started this Facebook group: Mahalo Hawaii Civil Defense - No Need to Apologize for a Job Well Done We got word just a few minutes ago that Civil Defense Vice-Director Ed Teixeira was made aware of the group this afternoon.

In case the above gets deleted...

Check out this article from the Star-Bulletin discussing how Island residents used social media to communicate during the tsunami watch/warning. I especially thought that this was interesting:

The flow of information via social media was faster than broadcast media, Lum (Danielle Lum, an adjunct professor at Chaminade University) said: "I'd read a Tweet about a buoy, the waves passing the buoy, and a couple minutes later I'd see it (on TV)." Some ocean buoys, connected to buoyalarm.com, are rigged to post ocean activity to Twitter.

I personally love using social media, but do think it must be noted that in a major natural disaster digital communication will not be reliable. Still recommended to have a good old-fashioned radio and plenty of batteries!