It's kind of scary/sad that I can now categorize Hawaii Tsunami's by year. Hmmm...
Anyway, let's backtrack a little more to 2010. During HI Tsunami '10 I was on the Big Island away from my family. More specifically, I was in Hilo which suffered extensive damage from a huge tsunami that took place years ago (under the same circumstances of HI Tsunami '10). Needless to say, I freaked out.
This year, I freaked out even more. That's what "freaked out" is bolded. It was a Thursday night and my grandma was at Cub Scouts, so I was home alone, in my room, tumblr surfing. When all of a sudden a post popped up on my dashboard saying that there was a MAJOR earthquake in Japan. My mouth dropped, my heart began to race and I began to shake.
In fact, I did look exactly like that (via).
Numbly, I made my way down the stairs and turned on the news. I tried not to cry as I saw how big the earthquake was and the damage that the earthquake alone had caused. They announced a tsunami watch for the Pacific Islands as well as the West Coast of the US, but I barely heard that announcement as I made my way back upstairs to google the Honshu area of Japan and which districts that included.
A map appeared on my google browser and there in the corner was the one thing I didn't want to see. Nagoya was in the Honshu area. I began to freak out even more. For those of you who don't know, one of my very good friends (and also a potential husband :P) is serving his mission in Nagoya, Japan. My grandma came home shortly after that and we began to make preparations to get out of the house since we live in an evacuation zone. But really, all I could think about was Elder K and wonder if he was okay.
It took us about 2 hours to get all of our stuff together as well as the dogs and get out of the house. On the way out, we stopped at a friend's house right down the road to find out where they were going and ended up deciding to go with them. We were originally going to go to my mom's house, but the roads out of the area where I live were crazy! So up we went to the Valley.
My friend's fiance's dad is one of the counselors in the Stake Presidency so I actually felt really safe where I was at. I knew we'd be okay if anything were to happen. His wife made us 'ono (delicious) spam musubis and she was so nice and kind. Plus, their other son, who I went to school with (but he graduated a year before me) had just come home from his mission and I got to meet (or re-meet) him, so that was cool.
We stayed up most of the night, watching the news and waiting for the wave to come while also being shown footage of the Japan Tsunami. Which I couldn't watch. But anyway, the wave was thankfully small and damage here on Oahu was very limited. We were grateful that there was no further damage. And at about 4:30 we went home. And I slept until about 9:30.
When I woke up, I immediately checked lds.org to see if there were any updates and thankfully there was! The church released a statement saying that all but a few missionaries in the Sendai area were contacted and accounted for. I breathed easily for the first time in hours.
And that is my tsunami story. I want to do something to help Japan but I don't have any money to give, so I was thinking of maybe sewing blankets or something for the cause. Do you guys think that's a good idea?
