Twoprops’ compound is at over 2,000 feet elevation, so we don’t worry much about tsunamis.
O, hubris!
I’m sure yesterday’s 8.8 earthquake in Kamchatka and the resulting tsunami warnings made the national news. They involved the Pacific coast of almost all of North America, Russia, Japan, and — of course — most Pacific islands including ours.
Apart from concern for our neighbors, we shouldn’t have had anything to worry about. Except that, we naturally picked yesterday for a trip to the beach and to some big stores in a coastal town.
It was a beautiful morning at the beach. Uncrowded. Warm turquoise water. Waves measured in inches. We even got our shopping done, but the tsunami warnings came as we were checking out.
Folks took the warnings seriously, as this island has a storied history of devastating destruction and loss of life from tsunamis. Alas, for us this meant we got caught in the evacuation traffic as we were trying to get home. The nominally hour-long trip home ended up taking over four hours. Ugh.
As it turned out, the tsunami resulted in truly minimal damage worldwide (as near as I’ve been able to determine) so everyone was safe. There was even a silver lining: we had some dear friends who had stayed with us the night before. As we parted at the beach yesterday morning, I had said “feel free to come stay again any time, even if it’s today!” Well, the beach park where they had planned to spend the night was closed by the tsunami so they came and spent another night with us. And since I had been able to pick up more decking, they helped install it and gave me oodles of valuable advice on the pavilion decking project (he’s a master carpenter and boatbuilder).
To continue the natural disaster theme, there has been some sort of fire activity mauka from us: fire trucks going up and down the road, and water-drop helicopters passing overhead. Let’s hope it’s as anticlimactic as the tsunami.
—2p
addendum 20250731@08:06
The fire was apparently several acres of brush fire, a bit more than a mile away from us. Since there’s been no further activity on the road since yesterday evening, I assume it’s all contained.