Saturday night I got an alert on my phone that
said that there had been a big earthquake in Canada.
It said that there Hawaii was ok, no warning.
Not too long after that I had the television on and got the
last bit of a bulletin...
"tsunami warning in effect, first wave expected at 10:27."
What???? That was two hours away. The news alerts started coming in
on my phone and on the tv.
I knew that I needed some gas, so I went out. The lines were starting and people were moving
out of Haleiwa.
this is the map that was shown.
As I came back, my phone rang and it was Bishop Rowley.
He asked me if I could send out an e-mail to the RS telling them that he was going
to open the building at 9:00pm.
I had called our friends, Pam & Alex Martinez from Capo who have a vacation
house out here, when the first warning came. They were at the PCC for Haunted Lagoon.
Pam called me back to tell me that the PCC was evacuating and they were heading
back this way to the ward building.
As I was on the phone with Kay, the sirens started. I think this is the most
un-nerving part.
I came home, sent the email. Tried calling hubby, no answer. He has never
been here for one of these. I sent my kids a text, just telling them that I was fine and
where I was going. Traci called me back she'd heard from her friend in New
Zealand!
the line when I went to get gas
not too much later, they were closed as was everything else in Haleiwa
the church parking lot starting to fill up
I put a movie on for some of the young girls to watch.
Our house actually straddles the evacuation line. So everyone on our street
pretty much stays here (except for the local guy). Terry and I just
feel it's better to be safe than sorry. We have an emergency binder with our info in it, so
it's easy to grab along with a 72 hour pack.
Since I'm here alone, I'd much rather be at the church.
We watched the news on our computers and I'm amazed how fast the emergency
services go into affect here. Waikiki looks like a ghost town, the freeways
empty, roads close...everything comes to a halt.
We stood in the parking lot and watched the steady stream of cars leaving Haleiwa, Waialua
just getting to high ground.
I'm so thankful that once again we dodged a bullet and there wasn't any damage.
