Sunday, October 15, 2006

Earthquake Day

A major earthquake woke me up at 7am this morning. I've felt tremors before, and they were always kind of fun. This was scary. I don't remember the beginning - I woke up and was already out of bed and crouching down. Nothing broke in my house; the scariest part was that it just kept going on.

The power went out, my cell died, and there was a cold rain coming down. I should have called Civil Defense ... but ... no phone. So I went back to bed. When the rain cleared I biked down to Waikiki. No one I ran into knew much of anything. We learned that the airport was closed, power was out across the state, and that the quake was from somewhere off Kohala.

I ended up at Hula's, where the boys were celebrating Earthquake Day. It was a good time. Had some drinks with Luis, Kevin, Roy, and some other guys I hadn't met before. We agreed to do it again next year.

Everyone was in pretty good humor. I appreciate Hawai`i on days like today, because if this was the mainland it could've been ugly.

The power came on an hour ago at my place around 6:30 pm, and I finally learned what happened. It was a 6.5 magnitude quake caused when the weight of the islands caused them to drop down a bit into the tectonic plate. There were no fatalaties or major injuries [wow!], but landslides and weak bridges have closed most of the roads on the Big Island.

We still have a flash flood warning. Rock and Roll!

No comments: