Gee Why

Just some notes remembering the night of March 10, 2011. Nothing exciting and nothing you haven’t already heard or experienced.

About 8:30pm, fired up Twitter and started reading tweets about a possible tsunami?! Followed the #HItsunami tag to catch up and learned of the huge earthquake (and aftershocks) that devastated Japan. Turned on the television news to learn more.

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About 9:00pm, decided to go to the market to buy some supplies and also get some gas. The line at the nearby gas station was way too long so I turned around and headed to the market instead. The Safeway parking lot was bristling with activity. Inside was strangely calm until I noticed that everyone was in line at the checkout registers. Only thing is, the only two manned registers were closed, and the self checkout stations were shut down.

Two lines had formed, each winding its way along the side then back of the store. I was going to head out empty handed, but we kinda needed a few things and who knew what things would be like the next day. I tried making calls home, but I couldn’t get through on AT&T. So I got my stuff, stood in line, and waited.

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Luckily, data via 3G was working, albeit a little delayed. So email, Twitter, and Facebook kept me informed of the latest happenings including AT&T voice services being overwhelmed. The checkout lines finally started to move as more Safeway workers arrived. And these workers deserve credit for coming in under these unknown circumstances and also for working quickly, whittling down the enormous lines in a few minutes.

Finally got home about 10:00pm (but I had given up on getting gas). Watched more news about the earthquake and a possible tsunami. As the hours went by and the tsunami watch turned into a tsunami warning, I started charging batteries, phones, and other devices. Around midnight, I decided to get some sleep before the estimated tsunami arrival at 3am.

At 2-something, my alarms and the emergency sirens woke me up. There weren’t any more definitive specifics so I waited.  And waited and waited.  You know the rest of Oahu’s tsunami (non) story.  Although I do admit that from all previous natural disaster close calls for Hawaii, I thought we were due.  This had to be it, but fortunately it wasn’t.

For Japan, each day brings seemingly new challenges, and for me, it’s totally unimaginable – the earthquakes, the flooding, possible radiation leaks, the chaos. My thoughts go out to the people of Japan and their long road ahead.