Saturday, February 27, 2010

Liveblogging the Tsunami, Sort of


Fugu got a call from his dad last night, shortly following the earthquake in Chile, about some buoys between Hawaii and the quake. Tsunami, he said. Aaaaaaa! He didn't say that, really. He's a bad-ass geologist; a scientist; and not prone to panicking. At least outwardly.

We were playing Starcraft, getting our butts kicked by six Zerg armies.

Next morning, the civil defense sirens woke us the hell up. Two people I follow on the Twitter, @trulyjoannies and @thedailydish (both blongers) had been obsessively tweeting info all night, about the tsunami, civil defense responses, how to prepare, etc. Very helpful.

Then I started watching the Twitter #hitsunami tag, which started off slow and then went kind of worldwide (now, it's kind of riddled with spam and prayers). Also, TV (pictured, above). I checked our supplies, which included nicotine gum for bartering and and zip ties to restrain captives from enemy tribes. Power Bars. Filled our bathtub with water.

I can see this from my window:


Those are all boats out in the ocean. They aren't usually there. The boats are out there so they don't get smashed.

Rick Sanchez on CNN was being an amazing douchepocket, trying to get a scientist to admit that there was an extinction-level tsunami hurtling toward everyone and that we should all be fucking screaming.

The water is starting to recede from Hilo Harbor (see first image), on the island of Hawaii. Okay, and now it's going back out. And coming back in. You know, I don't really know what Hilo Harbor is like, usually. Maybe it does this all the time.

I might post any updates in the comments. Please feel free to do the same, even if you don't live in Hawaii, and want to maybe guess at what's happening.

Oh, there are experts on television saying that this isn't over yet. The water in many harbors across the state continue to drain quickly and flow back in quickly.

7 comments:

Fugu said...

I just got back from field reporting at one of the Diamond Head lookout points. Dudes, that place was packed! See that dude on the right? Is he even wearing clothes??? Oh—and people were smoking pot right there on the street! WTF! Craziness. I didn't take a picture of Kahala Ave, but there was barely room to drive with all the double/triple parkers and giant TV vans.

So anyway I got there around 11:00 am. Here's a photo of what I saw. At 11:50-ish we noticed that the water was receding. See the dark coral line there on the beach? That was the water line before the water receded—it pulled back maybe ten feet or so. Eventually, by 12:30, it maxed out to where you see on the right.

That was it.

Oh! And we saw some awesome whales!

Mike said...

UPDATE: Tsunami warning cancelled.

Mike said...

Whoops, I posted this whole thing as me.

Fugu said...

Some amazing photos of Chile from the Boston Globe

Litcube said...

Thanks for the updates, Mike. Glad to hear everyone's ok.

Heeero said...

Not to be insensitive or anything but in Boston Globe's picture #4, did anyone else find it ironic that a shelf rack labeled "intimate protection" was holding up the giant display case that fell over?

Galspanic said...

Thanks for posting this, Mike. it's nice to see what people saw from the other side of the mountain.