Tsunami Warning.... Part III

The news article below details some of the panic we experienced here yesterday. I was sleeping in a village called Mele when banging on the door disturbed my sleep at 5 AM. I opened the door half-asleep and listened to a villager explain that the entire country was under a tsunami warning because of a massive earth quake.

I had felt a minor earthquake at 9:30 PM the night before but did not think much of it.

Being a low-lying village, almost the entire population of 5,000 people evacuated to the hillsides. I was hesitant to go at first, because A.) I was drowsy and B.) I was in a second story building about a mile inland. But as I was staying at a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer's apartment, I followed her lead (which was the smart and responsible thing to do anyway). We hitched a ride in the back of a pickup to the top of a massive hilltop and awaited a killer tsunami to arrive at 8:30 AM. We played cards with village children in our impromptu refugee camp, hundreds of people swarming around us. The radio gave us vague updates every half hour, otherwise the DJ was playing Michael Jackson's, "We Are the World" on repeat to slowly torture us. The entire country was on "Red Alert." Nothing actually arrived and we returned to the apartment at lunch time- but better safe than sorry.

I fly back to Aneityum early tomorrow morning. I am looking forward to getting back to life on the island, I am sure Super Man misses me quite a bit.

Scientists defend warning after tsunami nonevent

By GILLIAN FLACCUS (AP) – 2 hours ago

HONOLULU — The warning was ominous, its predictions dire: Oceanographers issued a bulletin telling Hawaii and other Pacific islands that a killer wave was heading their way with terrifying force and that "urgent action should be taken to protect lives and property."

But the devastating tidal surge predicted after Chile's magnitude 8.8-earthquake for areas far from the epicenter never materialized and by Sunday, authorities had lifted the warning after waves half the predicted size tickled the shores of Hawaii and tourists once again jammed beaches and restaurants.

Scientists acknowledged they overstated the threat, but defended their actions, saying they took the proper steps and learned the lessons of the 2004 Indonesian tsunami that killed thousands of people who didn't get enough warning.

"It's a key point to remember that we cannot end the warnings. Failure to warn is not an option for us," said Dai Lin Wang, an oceanographer at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii. "We cannot have a situation that we thought was no problem and then it's devastating. That just cannot happen."

Hundreds of thousands of people fled shorelines for higher ground Saturday in a panic that circled the Pacific Rim after scientists warned 53 nations and territories that a tsunami had been generated by the massive Chilean quake.

It was the largest-scale evacuation in Hawaii in years, if not decades. Emergency sirens blared throughout the day, the Navy moved ships out of Pearl Harbor, and residents hoarded gasoline, food and water in anticipation of a major disaster. Some supermarkets even placed limits on items like Spam because of the panic buying.

At least five people were killed by the tsunami on Robinson Crusoe Island off Chile's coast and huge waves devastated the port city of Talcahuano, near hard-hit Concepcion on Chile's mainland.

But the threat of monster waves that left Hawaii's sun-drenched beaches empty for hours never appeared — a stark contrast to the tidal surge that killed 230,000 people around the Indian Ocean in 2004 and flattened entire communities.

This time, waves of more than 5 feet were reported in Kahului Bay in Maui and in Hilo, on the eastern coast of Hawaii's Big Island, but did little damage. Predictions of wave height in some areas were off by as much as 50 percent.

In Tonga, where up to 50,000 people fled inland hours ahead of the tsunami, the National Disaster Office had reports of a wave up to 6.5 feet hitting a small northern island, with no indications of damage.

And in Japan, where authorities ordered 400,000 people out of coastal communities, the biggest wave was a 4-foot surge that hit the northern island of Hokkaido, flooding some piers.

Still, scientists offered no apologies for the warning and defended their work, all while worrying that the false alarm could lead to complacency among coastal residents — a disastrous possibility in the earthquake-prone Pacific Rim.