At literally the eleventh hour, a.m. Hawaii time, a 12-foot tsunami generated by the massive 8.8 magnitude Chilean earthquake is predicted to strike our seven inhabited isles. First landfall: the Big Island, where 61 people died in 1960 when a tsunami took out Hilo after a magnitude 9.6 Chilean tremblor. Last September, after the devastating Samoan quake, Hawaii harbors and beaches experienced a 2-foot surge that grounded a few boats after a tsunami warning was downgraded to an advisory. No one drowned, even though the surge washed over the breakwater at Waikiki, where small children and non-swimmers sport in normally shallow waters.
This time it's a full-on warning, and residents of low-lying coastal zones are supposed to leave, except for tourists in high-rise hotels. For tourists, there is "vertical evacuation," a term I've never heard before. It means that guests shouldn't leave their hotels. Instead, they should go above the third floor, where, they are told, they will be safe.
"If coastal areas are evacuated, visitors in Waikiki would be moved to higher floors in their hotels, rather than moved out of the tourist district, which could cause gridlock," reports the AP.
Meanwhile, island residents have been driving around like crazy since before dawn, topping off their gas tanks and shopping for the emergency items the television news is telling them to get, including enough food and water for seven days.
With memories of the South Asian tsunami's devastation forever fresh, why are visitors being told not to leave their hotels? It's simple: It's bad for tourism if Hawaii and its hotels appear unsafe or even uncomfortable in any way. When it comes to rainy weather, pollution or impending disaster, in these islands whose number one industry is tourism, no news is good news. That's why no warning signs were posted on Waikiki beaches until six days after millions of gallons of raw sewage from a broken main darkened normally turquoise waters in 2006. Even then, beaches weren't closed. And in contrast with media in Mainland cities, which posts daily air quality reports indicating when smog and soot reach unhealthy levels, it's a rare occasion when Hawaiin media issues warnings about vog -- or volcanic smog -- which regularly thickens Oahu, Maui and Big Island air with lung-damaging sulfur dioxide and particulate matter.
Apparently the visitor industry won't tolerate vacancy rates rising, even for a day.
Indeed, the print issue of today's Star-Bulletin places the tsunami advisory on page 5, while the front page displays the headline, "Tourists Returning."
We live near Waikiki, on the lower slope of Diamond Head, two short blocks from the sea. The warning sirens went off at 6 a.m., and they're going off again now, although much more faintly than the first-of-the-month test blasts. (According to the T.V. news, the Waikiki siren is down. Hmmm....) Soon I have to head for the hills. The fire trucks are circulating through the lower neighborhood with their loudspeakers blasting, "Attention. Attention. This is an emergency evacuation. Head for higher ground. Do not delay."
But are we in the evacuation zone? We're in the upper neighborhood, on the mountainside, or mauka, of Diamond Head Road. The warning trucks are sticking to the road itself, or makai of it. In the Internet and mobile age, television news says look in our phone books for tsunami evacuation zone maps. Uh-oh, good green citizen, did you already recycle yours? Tsk-tsk, you're supposed to keep the new ones. KHON, the NBC affiliate, suggests looking at their website, but provides no URL. All the government evacuation websites have crashed.
Our phone book map says we're okay where we are. Still, "Water's very fluid, so you never know," as cute weather forecaster Justin Fujioka says.
So we're about to head for the hills, literally, hiking up Diamond Head behind and above our house.
Before I set forth, GreenerPenny has to provide a note on how we are disaster prepping green:
Already shoppers have congested the aisles of Safeway and Costco. I took out and filled my lightweight stainless steel bottles. One of them has a built-in filter, which is cool. But in a disaster, any clean bottle you can refill will do. Forget about the hormone-disrupting plastic chemical bisphenol-A, just for a day! I can't believe I said that.
So we're off. Will keep you posted.
Follow Mindy Pennybacker on Twitter: www.twitter.com/greenerpenny
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vertical evacuations...
If you don't live in Hawaii, you probably can't conceive the degree to which the population is conditioned to live in a supine tourist-friendly state. I do live here, but also lived in NYC during 9/11 and have friends who lived through that because they rejected Vertical Evacuation in the first tower.
Of course we don't want 100,000 screaming tourists in the streets, but this is the third alert in a year that hasn't panned out. The FEMA/NOAA/Emergency folks rolled a gutter ball.
Seriously, I know many people who rode out a dozen hurricanes and hurricane warnings in New Orleans, because hey, the big one never really showed up, right? And then Katrina came, and they huddled in their houses fearing the roof would be blown off any second, and then a day later had to use an axe to get out of their attic before the water rose above the level of the house. They know, now, that it's much better to be safe than sorry.
Our governor at the time had a message for folks who thought evacuation orders were things to just ignore: "Take a marker, and write your social security number in your arm... so we can identify your body next week when we find you."
You have instead decided to use this emergency to promote your activism. Obviously you are chosen to write on this site because you have certain views, but taking a shot at the tourism industry on this is wrong.
Moving the 60,000 people residing in Waikiki on short notice is problematic.
I can't believe someone would say such an uninformed thing.
Our hotels are built to exacting requirements and being above the 3rd floor should be much, much safer and more comfortable than getting caught in a mass exodus.
Bad move. Bad, bad move...
What a kooky conspiracy theory.
Where should they go? Drive all over and get in everyone's way? Tourists obviously don't have homes to go to.
Simple concept. The wave packs a lot of energy, but does not have enough strength to weaken major buildings. So the people with no place else just climb up in those buildings above the projected high-water mark.
Moving the tourists elsewhere runs a high risk of trapping folks on the roads when the wave hits, which would risk many more lives. Remember the traffic jams in Houston when they tried to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Rita, a month after Katrina? Had the hurricane hit, many more lives would have been lost in the jams.
Vertical evacuation was also used in New Orleans, after Katrina (http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_38/b3951016.htm). Any time the catastrophic danger is from flooding, the fundamental safety requirement is to up above the level of the water.
Glad you're going green by walking out. Detroit needs the business; when you have to replace your cars after the wave, you'll be helping stimulate the economy, That will probably create more CO2 than driving your cars out of harms way, but who cares? And I'm sure others, who drove out of the area carrying more supplies in their vehicles than you could, will share with you.