At 1AM last night we woke up to tsunami sirens and howling dogs. Our hound Sheba was crooning to the sirens. We all got up and checked the internet - we had slept through an 8.2 earthquake (later downgraded to 7.9). Tsunami warning in effect! Nora looked out the kitchen window and noticed all the cars driving by - our neighbors were evacuating.
So I grabbed some water and sleeping bags and we drove about 2 minutes to nearby North Star Elementary which is situated on top of a hill. We joined a growing crowd of cars. My friend Mike P sent me a text. He was 2 cars away. Everybody was visiting and listening to the radio. Rumors were rampant - 32 foot wave on the way, the harbor is draining, wait no it isn't. Another rumor was that the NOAA tsunami website was down because of the government shutdown - was that one true?
And then I got messages from people on the East coast. I found our earthquake was big news. We waited a few hours and then the tsunami warning got downgraded to an alert. Time to go home, and the sirens finally stopped.
It turns out that the earthquake was of the strike/slip variety and not one that goes up and down like they often do in subduction zones. Hence it did not generate a big wave like what happened in 1964. Kind of cool to see that we were ready for it. Driving back we heard about a traffic jam on the road to Pillar Mountain behind town. Those people could not go home as easily as we did.
When we got up in the morning school was cancelled. On the internet and TV Kodiak was headline news. I went downtown to check on the museum - then went for a walk in the sunshine with the dogs. When I checked the news again (USA Today) we were no longer on the front page. The news cycle seems to have moved on. Patrick
You should build a tsunami evacuation shelter (aka adult treefort) in one of your trees.
ReplyDeleteHey there, First I heard of it, was a post by Zoya. So I followed it closely as well. I found a live Facebook stream from some guy called Larry, that ended up being followed by thousands of people all over the world. Eventually it turned out there was nothing happening, so that was a good thing.
ReplyDeleteBut talking about possible disasters, I wonder if you have seen the news about Cape Town? We have been having a three year long drought, now statistically said to be the worst in the 100 years of record keeping. And with the huge increase in population Cape Town has experienced in the last 20 years, we are desperately short of water. The City finally admitted last week, that it is now just a matter of time til we run out of water. Sometime in April, Cape Town will become the first major coastal city in history, to literally run out of water. This is quite a thing to try and understand. There will literally be NO water for 4 million people. Unbelievable.
The Winter rains that might save us, usually only start in June, but over the last 3 years, even those have been some of the lowest in history, so the future is pretty bleak here. There are all sorts of projects to desalinate, and to tap into Artesian wells, but nothing that is going to be completely ready in less than 3 months!
Try read a bit about it.
Glad to hear the tsunami warning was Fake News!!
Philip