An Eventful Weekend

We have had quite the eventful weekend. We live in Hawaii.On Saturday we had a tsunami warning. We have tsunami warnings often, but this time they were taking it very serious. It all started....
Saturday morning, about 5 am, my husband's cell phone was ringing. He woke up and checked his voice mail. My mother called him and told him about the warning(she is on the east coast). He woke me up. "There is a tsunami warning. We have to get up." I really didn't think much of it because like I said we get these warnings a lot. "I am going downstairs to turn on the news." he whispered. A few moments later, he came back upstairs and told me it was expected to hit the islands around 11:15 a.m. "I think you need to get up!", he was very serious so I got out of bed. I came downstairs and we were watching the news. Immediately, we started thinking about where we were going to go and what we needed to pack. On the news they said we would need 7 days of food and water, light clothing, first aid kit, flashlight, radio, important papers, etc. My husband decided he would go and fill the van up with gas and I told him to go to the atm and pull out cash. I was thinking if the power went out for a few weeks the atms wouldn't be working. So, he left and so did everyone else. The lines at all of the gas stations were long. They even had the police standing guard.
While he was gone I started packing up food and filling every possible container with water. Meanwhile the sirens were going off outside.
The sirens woke the kids up. They came down the stairs and asked me what was going on. "Why was your phone ringing all night? Why are there sirens going off?"When I told them, the look of fear came over their faces. I told them we would be okay and that we had plenty of time to get somewhere safe. After the initial shock, I had them collect blankets for everyone and spare clothes. I thought it would be better for them and helpful to me if I kept them busy.
My husband came home from getting gas and we started packing the car with everything.
Then he told me on the radio they were asking people to stay home if they didn't need to evacuate. I called the Civil Defense because I wasn't sure if we needed to evacuate or not. We can see the ocean from our neighborhood but I wasn't sure how far a tsunami wave would travel. They told me we would be safe at home. When I told the kids we were going to stay home they didn't believe me and kept insisting we needed to leave. Finally, I explained to them that it would be more dangerous for us to be on the road.
Just as a precautionary, we decided to take all of the food and water upstairs on the second floor of the house. We told them at 11:00 we would all head upstairs and stay until it was over with.
It was 7:00 am and we turned the t.v. off. I just felt to have it on was not doing us any good. The constant reminder of what was coming was exhausting emotionally and physically. We were ready and we knew around what time it was going to hit. We decided we would turn the news back on at 10:45.
After breakfast, I vacuumed the house and cleaned the bathrooms just to keep mind busy.
Around 9:00,we took the kids outside and played on the playground for a little while.
Although, it was kind of eerie outside. Everything was quiet besides the sirens.
We came inside and turned the news on again. We watched as the big island, Hawaii, prepared to get hit first. It was now 11:05 which was when the big island was supposed to be hit. As we watched on the news, you could see the water being sucked out (you could see the reef)and rushing back in, but no big waves. It happened again and again. Each time faster then the time before. We were waiting for this monster wave to come into the camera's view but thank God it never happened.
So, it was quite the scare but we were safe!! We did learn that in an emergency we pulled together as a family. We all took on a job, completed it and were ready to evacuate with in an hour. It amazed me!
After all of that, tonight we went for our usual nightly walk. I somehow lost the garage key and we were locked out for about an hour and a half. It just happened to be a really chilly night too. Luckily, my neighbor brought jackets over for the kids and shortly after the locksmith was at our house. I was suppose to be doing my midterm tonight for the class I am taking, but I decided I would blog about this crazy weekend instead. After a good nights sleep, midterm tomorrow night!!