It was an exciting and a little scary event! I couldn’t sleep and woke up at 4:30 am so I put on TV and was surprised to see News broadcast on Saturday. Then I found out that there was a tsunami heading our way by 11:30 am. They showed on TV how the islanders were reacting. The stores were packed with people buying water, batteries, butane canisters for portable stoves, rice & other necessities, wagon loads of supplies, for in case we lose our electricity and power. People were even filling up their cars cause with no electricity the pumps won’t work, no gas. They showed long lines for gas about 10 -15 cars waiting to get into the gas station area. Some gas stations even ran out of gas!

I went to Don Quijote at 7:00 am, to buy water in case they ran out latter, sure enough, by 8:00 am they were sold out of every size bottle water. You could not find any, the shelves were empty. My mother went around 9:00 am to Safeway, Walmart, Times and it was the same, all sold out! We thought we’d better get a good meal in before the Tsunami so we went to the Pancake House on Kapiolani but it was closed because it was in the evacuation area. Luckily LikeLike up the street on Keeaumoku was still opened. Checking the phone book for the evacuation areas showed that Kapiolani towards the ocean side had to be evacuated, Kalakaua near Ala Wai into Waikiki also was closed, no cars were allowed in. Hawaii Kai Drive was closed too. And everyone prepared for the Waves.

By 11:30 am, we were at my mother’s house near Leahi, (back side of Diamond Head), anxiously watching the wave movement on TV. They were showing Hilo Bay on the Big Island where the Tsunami would hit first. We watched the water slowly drain out of the pond in front of Hilo Hawaiian Hotel, like a river flowing out to the ocean. It kept flowing out for about 5 min. and then there was just mud left then it reversed and water started to flow inward like a river flowing in from the ocean. The water came up to the little bridge and then went all the way down exposing the foundation of the walkway bridge.

We were lucky this time.  Thanks to our reefs Oahu has a little more protection.  Although the all clear was declared by 3:00pm in the afternoon, the waters didn’t quite seem normal.  Two days later while walking on Magic Island at Ala Moana Park, we noticed waves going sideways instead of breaking towards the shore.  There would be a few normal ones and then one that went sideways.  Even the surf didn’t look quite normal and nice breaking, the ocean looked confused.  It took about a couple more days for it to go back to normal.