We Survived Tsunami 2011!

As you might have heard, yesterday Japan was hit with a massive earthquake. The earthquake was the 5th largest ever recorded and has created a lot of destruction. As a result of the earthquake, a tsunami was created and was directed at Hawaii where we are currently vacationing.

At 12 AM we got a knock on the door. Not being used to the 3 hour time difference, we had been asleep since 9:00. The man at the door was pounding and yelling. He waited about 2 seconds for a response before busting into our resort room yelling for us to wake up. Dazed, I got up and went out of the room to find this guy standing in our doorway. Since I was still mostly asleep, I had a hard time understanding what the guy was telling me (He was probably wondering why I was standing there speechless and glaring at him). The man informed us that there was a Tsunami and that the alarms had been going off for about two hours already. Still half asleep all I could do was stare at him still.... He continued to tell me that it was very serious and that we needed to evacuate immediately as the entire building had already been evacuated. I finally started to register what the man was saying and quickly yelled at Tyson and Bree and told them we needed to get out. We were told to go the the evacuation center which was at an elementary school up the road. We grabbed some bottles of water and some extra clothes, got in our car and headed to safety. The weird thing was "safety" was only about 3 blocks up from our resort. When we got there I told Tyson, "Wow, I feel so much safer now..."

After listening to the radio and the mayor, we found out that the tsunami was estimated to hit around 3:30 AM. Realizing that we would be sleeping in the car, we decided to walk back down to our resort (since the roads were closed) to grab some pillows and blankets. When we got back to our car, we wanted to make a bed on the grass next to our car. As we were looking for a place to lie down, some locals informed us that we were best to sleep in our car unless we didn't mind cockroaches crawling on us. YIKES! So we settled in our car for a long sleepless night.

Throughout the night the sirens continued to sound and we waited and waited for any new news. On the radio they kept us as up to date as they could on the situation. We were sad to hear of the massive impact the earthquake and tsunami had on Japan and we could only wait and see what was going to happen in Hawaii.

At about 3:45 the first tsunamis started to hit. Fortunately, the area we were in was not effected by the wave. Very close down the road, there was some flooding on the roads with about 6inces of water. In Lahina, which is a place we like to go, they had a 9 foot wave, we haven't heard much about what is going on there. At about 6 in the morning we were finally able to get through the blocked roads and back to our resort. Today the island is still on tsunami watch and nobody is allowed to go in the water. We are very lucky to have not been affected, now we are just a little sleep deprived.

Thanks to our family for the calls. We are all okay. It was quite and adventure and we are glad that it did not turn out for the worse in Hawaii.

Cars lining the streets

Our bed for the night in our car. Bree was really excited about all the drama! I was really tired...