Shake and Quake!

[damontucker]

Re: Shake and Quake!

a very dramatic video "simulation" of Oahu getting wiped out from a Tsunami generated off the big island can be found here:

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/video/
(in the search video block... type in tsunami... then it's the first video on the left entitled ultimate tsunami... click on that for the Video)

It is very scary and needless to say... where I live on Oahu.... I would be wiped out real quick.

[MadAzza]

Re: Shake and Quake!

What are some Hawaiian words for 'earthquake'?

From my dictionary:

ola'i
naueue

I could see screaming either of those in terror.

[Miulang]

Re: Shake and Quake!

If any of you had computers or other electrical equipment damaged by the power outage, you can try to get some compensation from HECO. Follow these instructions, but file your claim within the next 30 days. They will review your claim and are compensating people on a per case basis.

HECO has started taking claims from residents who were harmed by the outage. Customers must file their claims within 30 days and can obtain claim forms by calling 543-4624. The claims are subject to review, and awards will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Miulang

[Linkmeister]

Re: Shake and Quake!

Newsweek has a web-only story about the causes of the earthquake.

[Konaguy]

Re: Shake and Quake!

Newsweek has a web-only story about the causes of the earthquake.

Mahalo Steve, you gave me some more blogging material.

Today was quiet on the aftershock front today here in Kona.

[Karen]

Re: Shake and Quake!

Howdy, very cool to read the reports from a lot of other people, to our wild surprise of a Sunday!

My Cingular worked every time I tried to use it, got calls from and to Texas, and several places here on Oahu. Course, I also had an old trimline phone hooked up to the regular phone line, and there was the early times when all circuits were busy no matter which phone, cell or landline, that we tried to use.

What a day, but it was fun having an auntie that's a neighbor over, eating leftovers warmed outside, and then steaks cooked outside, and all of us stayin home and off the roads most of the day.

Yesterday was the 17th. anniversary of our Oct. 17 Loma Prieta earthquake which we were living in Gilroy, California as homeowners, for, and funny that it hit at 17:04 PM, and the magnitude was 17, backwards, being a 7.1, LOL. that's the biggest quake of many that I've ridden out, and yet this one was the biggest surprise, here in Hawaii cuz it was the first one I've felt in my more than a dozen years of living here.

I'm still not sure if I felt the first or the second cuz I hadn't crashed till three AM, and was sleeping deeply when awakened. we sleep with two fans in the room, both noise makers for the white sound of it, and so only the shaking, not house noises awoke us. Course we had/have a young man living in our home now that's just moved back here from Canada, and it was his first quake ever, and he was sleeping in the extra bedroom with a seven foot wide weight machine in it, lots of metal and weights on it, he had no fan on and I hear that my beloved machine made lots of noise and freaked him out, poor guy.

[WindwardOahuRN]

Re: Shake and Quake!

I was at work when it happened. Just finished giving shift report. We heard it before we felt it.

At first we thought it was just an unusually loud USCG jet helicopter landing on the roof. We're on the fourth floor, they land on top of the tenth floor, and they can get pretty loud and shake the building a bit. But noooo.

It got louder and the light trembling turned into heavy vibrations. Then really loud rumbling. IV bags were swinging, the monitors were shaking, a few things fell off counters and tables. The building actually started to SWAY!!!

I and two other nurses huddled in a doorway. I think that's what you're supposed to do, from what I remembered from those comforting little notices you see in hotel rooms in San Francisco. Standing there, I looked around and got real apprehensive concerning the enormous amount of glass in that place. Very large windows, glass room doors. Eeeek.

That lasted about thirty seconds or so but it felt like an eternity. I guess the worst of it is that you have no idea how bad it's going to get. You wait for the crashes and crumbling walls. Let out a big "WHEW" when it doesn't happen.

There was a pretty decent aftershock, too, a minute or so later. Back to the doorway huddle.

About ten minutes after the initial hit the power went out. All kinds of alarms screaming, vents flipping to battery mode for the brief period before the emergency generators kicked in. We ran around checking the vents and equipment. Everything was working okay.

Since the day crew was already there we were allowed to leave. No elevators, of course. I trudged down five flights of stairs with my crappy right knee protesting the entire way.

That was the easy part. Then I had to haul myself UP five flights of stairs to my car, parked on the fifth floor of the parking garage. No lights in the steamy stairwell (I think it was about 120 degrees in there---no joke) except for my pupil-checker penlight. Wooohoooo.

Drove home with no traffic lights but the Sunday morning traffic was extremely light and drivers at intersections were wonderfully courteous. I saw cars lined up along roads that had vantage points for watching the ocean from a distance. They had cameras and were waiting in the rain with umbrellas. I realized later that they were watching and waiting for a tsunami. They were disappointed.

Hubby and the dog greeted me. The dog ran out to the car and had to be coaxed with a cookie to come back into the evil trembling house. Some stuff had fallen off shelves and a there had been a lot of rattling but no real
damage.

We got out the emergency box, turned on the radio, and listened to Perry and Price. I fell asleep.

The power was back on by about 1915. Everything in the fridge was still very cold.

So, it was scary, could have been much worse, the beer never got warm, and I had cable in time for "Desperate Housewives."

Life is good. ;-D

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Shake and Quake!

So, it was scary, could have been much worse, the beer never got warm, and I had cable in time for "Desperate Housewives."

Life is good. ;-D

And for the most part it was just a power failure. Could you imagine if the earthquake actually did hit Honolulu?

After the rumbling subsided in Keaau, I went back to work on my cottage out back and ran cordless tools and thought about Aaron and Tim over in Kona and wondered how they were faring the devastation, and virtually all utility disruption including the electricity.

It seemed Honolulu fared worse with no damage. That's not good for a society to get unhinged like that.

[WindwardOahuRN]

Re: Shake and Quake!

And for the most part it was just a power failure. Could you imagine if the earthquake actually did hit Honolulu?

After the rumbling subsided in Keaau, I went back to work on my cottage out back and ran cordless tools and thought about Aaron and Tim over in Kona and wondered how they were faring the devastation, and virtually all utility disruption including the electricity.

It seemed Honolulu fared worse with no damage. That's not good for a society to get unhinged like that.

I didn't see anyone getting "unhinged" at all. The quake tremors themselves were scary mostly because, as I said, you didn't know how bad it was going to get.

I don't know if any big city would remain "hinged" if hit by a major quake. It would be human nature, I think, for at least some to panic.

[Konaguy]

Re: Shake and Quake!

I was at work when this earthquake happened. It was like any typical Sunday for me. I was in our office getting ad signs printed for our Sunday ad. Then at 7:10AM the walls and ceiling started to violently shake. The power went out
as a started to run out of the office. Our training television in the office fell down in front of me. I kept on running out of the office to outside the store.

We were out there for about 20 minutes or so. Then we started to go back in the front part of the store. About that time another aftershock hit and we ran out of the building again. Where we stayed for awhile. I was able to
call up my mom to see if she was ok. It seemed we had a moderate amount of damage. Books were blocking access to our rooms, my mom lost a lot of glassware etc. I had a very hard time concentrating at work the rest of the day. It was like I was in a daze and totally shocked.

Craig,I really do appreciate your kind thoughts.

[craigwatanabe]

Re: Shake and Quake!

I didn't see anyone getting "unhinged" at all. The quake tremors themselves were scary mostly because, as I said, you didn't know how bad it was going to get.

I don't know if any big city would remain "hinged" if hit by a major quake. It would be human nature, I think, for at least some to panic.

Yes I would imagine a city getting unhinged from a major quake but in this case there was no quake damage other than power grids failing. No collapse of structures, no injuries or deaths, only loss of power, and look at what happened. Chaos is what happened. Yes a natural disaster occured, however it was a man-made failure that created the halt of everyday life. Everyday life that has become dependent on electricity.

That's what I mean when I say unhinged. Not people in general but the rule of order that ceases when electrons stop flowing. And I say again, imagine if the quake actually did hit Honolulu, how would the city react?

Now I can imagine Honolulu not being equipped to deal with a scenerio such as a major quake destroying or damaging many structures and a high number of deaths and injuries because Honolulu hasn't had to deal with that yet. For the most part practically the entire state hasn't had to deal with that level of chaos.

But this was a power failure. Honolulu has had repeated island wide outtages before, yet despite this, major disruptions happened anyway. We talk about disaster preparedness, obviously HNL wasn't prepared. Obviously major buildings lacked adequate back up power generation to keep people from getting stuck in elevators. Good thing it happened on a Sunday morning instead of Monday morning when traffic would have become a fused line of traffic from Kapolei to Hawaii Kai.

It was a power failure. And the sad part of it is that this wasn't the first or the second island wide power failure to occur on Oahu.

If Oahu was caught that unprepared for a repeated power failure of that magnitude, could you imagine if a quake actually did level Honolulu?

Bottom line is that for as much preparedness as was perceived, it wasn't enough. I was totally in awe that the Monday morning news was ALL ABOUT OAHU and virtually nothing about the Big Island where the quake did in fact damage buildings and destroy roads and destroy it's infrastructure.

The focus was on Oahu's island wide power outtage with the Red Cross feeding stranded travellers at Honolulu International Airport. Meanwhile way over on the other end of the island chain, buildings are falling down, roads are crumbling and people's homes were caving in. And the highlight of the morning? Travellers get stuck in an airport with nothing to eat because eateries were closed...not damaged...closed. Weary stuck travellers take taxies to a dark Waikiki meanwhile on West Hawaii, roads were impassible due to massive landslides and roads split open.

People are wondering what they're gonna eat because the power's out on Oahu. People in West Hawaii were wondering where they were going to sleep because their homes were destroyed, forget what's for lunch.

Where was the focus on this disaster? And by all media accounts, and the general word on the streets of the Big Island was, "Wow Oahu fared worse than the Big Island". That is amazing.

[Konaguy]

Re: Shake and Quake!

Where was the focus on this disaster? And by all media accounts, and the general word on the streets of the Big Island was, "Wow Oahu fared worse than the Big Island". That is amazing.

I completely agree Craig, I found it appalling that the focus was mostly on
Oahu.When in reality, the real damage happened on the Big Island.
Oahu will recover quickly from this power outage. While it may be months
or even years that it will take West Hawaii to recover.

[lavagal]

Re: Shake and Quake!

Craig:
You are so right. We on Oahu suffered through little more than a power outage. The awful part was the lack of information from community leaders, Civil Defense, public servants such as police and fire. No one knew what was going on or what to do.

That said, it was always on my mind that it would take a day or two to find out how the Big Island fared. When the first figure of $40 million came up, I thought that it was pretty optimistic. I expect it to grow beyond the current $46 million. We saw the walls, the roads, the cliffs falling into the ocean. But now we also see families who are forced to move out of their homes deemed unfit to live in. What do you do at that point? It is sad.

We on Oahu have to know that once again we dodged a bullet. But will our leaders take advantage of the opportunity to make sure emergency response systems are in place and immediately activated?

And not only the big picture, but what will be done for these displaced families on the Big Island?

[WindwardOahuRN]

Re: Shake and Quake!

Yes I would imagine a city getting unhinged from a major quake but in this case there was no quake damage other than power grids failing. No collapse of structures, no injuries or deaths, only loss of power, and look at what happened. Chaos is what happened. Yes a natural disaster occured, however it was a man-made failure that created the halt of everyday life. Everyday life that has become dependent on electricity.

That's what I mean when I say unhinged. Not people in general but the rule of order that ceases when electrons stop flowing. And I say again, imagine if the quake actually did hit Honolulu, how would the city react?

Sorry. I misunderstood. I thought you were referring to people in general.

There was a huge lack of information regarding the extent of the damage on the Big Island. The bulk of information from the Oahu radio transmissions was about the progressive return of electricity to Oahu, neighborhood by neighborhood.

We heard Linda Lingle's account of how the television in her Big Island hotel room fell over and she assumed her position in the doorway of her hotel room.

That was about it.

[dick]

Re: Shake and Quake!

Chaos? What chaos? I was driving all over the island all day and saw no "chaos."

Sure, people were inconvenienced, but it was hardly "chaos."

Chaos is looting and pillaging. Fires and anarchy. What we had were a bunch of people standing in line to buy some ice. And for the most part everyone treating intersections as four-way stops.