0311

I heard about the earthquake in Japan while at work last night.  The tsunami was to arrive here by around 3AM.  Our house sits about 5' above sea level.  Scientists have no ability to predict how big a tsunami might be in any particular area so we thought it might be prudent to leave the area.  Luckily a coworker invited us to spend the night at his house which is a couple miles away and a few hundred feet higher.  It was a lot nicer than spending the night in our car.  Pia's pretty much packed to leave tonight so we just threw her suitcases in the car.  I changed into shorts and a t-shirt so that if everything washed away, I wouldn't be stuck with only work clothes, grabbed my computer and we were out the door.

Came home this morning.  Water had come over the road and washed a bunch of palm junk onto the road but otherwise no damage here.  The property manager called to see how things were here this morning.  He said that Maalaea harbor emptied out and refilled to overflowing about 10 times and all but a couple of boats washed out to sea.

After writing this we went for a walk on the beach between Maalaea and Kihei at noon.  The water level was still varying by about 8' within 20 minutes.  We found the boats that we were told washed out to sea.  They were all anchored out in open water.

The pictures below were taken in Kahului harbor at bout 3pm (12 hours after the first wave hit Hawaii).  The second picture below was taken 5 minutes after the first.  90% of the increase occurred within 2 minutes.  In the third picture the water at the bottom of the picture is near it's current high.  You can see last night's high by the level of the grass in the upper fence which is at the top of the boat ramp at parking lot level.  The 4th picture is of  a small barracuda who couldn't quite make it through the fence.