I survived my 1st earthquake

Early on Sunday morning, at 7:07 local time to be precise, an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale occurred about 6 miles off from Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. The tremors could be felt all the way to Kauai, the furthest island on the island chain also known collectively as Hawaii. It was my first earthquake and I survived it. Well, here’s my sort of blow by blow of what happened that morning and after.




I was having sweet dreams as I normally do since before I sleep, msn friends always say “sweet dreams” when I felt my bed shaking. It was shaking pretty vigorously and I woke up with a pretty silly thought. In all honesty, I thought that my flatmates were playing a joke on me and were shaking my room. Yes, shaking my room. Look, I just woke up so rational thought hadn’t really begun yet. Anyway, after about a minute I realised that the earth was shaking and I sat up in my bed. At about the same time, my roommate Dick sat up as well. We looked at each other and he said, “Dude, what’s going on?” I was like, “Dude, I think it’s an earthquake.” And then Dick proved that I wasn’t the only one having weird irrational thoughts. He said, “Haha, I thought at first like why is Don Marcus shaking my bed.” We both laughed and then went back to sleep.

Yes, we went back to sleep. It seems so anti-climatic but that’s what happened. You would wonder why I was so calm about it and the reason was pretty simple. Nobody was panicking at all. There was nobody screaming and no mad running around. In all honesty it wasn’t really that bad since nothing fell off my messy desk and a light breeze could cause things to fall off my desk. Anyway, there was an after shock as well, that one was about a 5.4 I think but by that time, people were already going back to sleep and didn’t really care anymore.

Anyway, I eventually got out of bed at about 11 and went to make myself breakfast. I went to the kitchen cabinet and got a can of Campbell’s and put it into a microwavable container and then stuck it into the microwave. When I opened the door of the microwave however, the light didn’t come on and I began to panic. I then rushed to the fridge and opened it and the light in the fridge didn’t come on either. That spoilt my plan for the morning which was to have breakfast and watch the UH – Fresno State football game. (UH slaughtered Fresno by the way. Go Warriors!)

I was still pretty happy though because since I had a laptop, I could still be entertained by going on the internet and just surfing the net until my lappie batt died. So I turned on my laptop and then tried to log on but the wireless was down. Now I really began to worry. I went next door and asked if they had power and my neighbour said no. I asked how bad the power outage was still thinking it was only in Kalo that there was no power. I was wrong. Apparently, it was a State of Emergency declared throughout the Hawaiian Islands. In other words, there was no power in the whole state at all. As one of my friends said, we were thrown into the 3rd world.

There was no power at all and that was pretty tough because that meant that there was nothing to do. I thought that it was a good time to go for a run down to Waikiki but then I found out from other friends that there were a number of accidents already that day due to the fact that the traffic lights across the state were all down too. I decided to play it safe and to just chill at home and read before heading out to church in the evening.

Some of my friends thought that it would have been a great time to go surfing and theoretically, it would have been great for really big time surfers because the swells would have been great after the earthquake but luckily that decided not to since there might have still been a slight threat of a tsunami.


Also, for the first time in Hawaii, I heard the phrase, “poor tourists” since many of them were left pretty much stranded with no electricity. Think about it, no air-conditioning, no lights, and a fear of going to the beach. There were long lines for the ABC shops just so the tourists could buy snacks and water and stuff like flashlights. Convenience stores around the island were still open but they had people escorting the customers around so there would be no looting. There was no looting. Everything was pretty safe. Tourists even said that it made them like Hawaii more because people everywhere were really nice and helpful.

Anyway, mass was pretty fun because it was dubbed “Mass, Unplugged.” In all honesty, it was pretty fun and made the mass feel pretty special. There were no microphones but it was alright since the Newman Centre isn’t big at all and it was also lucky that Fr. Chris, the Parish Priest, has such a nice loud voice, A great singing voice too. Anyway, it was nice in the semi dark to look at the candles just being constant and not flickering at all.

After mass, I went for dinner with some of the folks at Kalo at a place called Magoos, which has its own generator. Just before I finished my food, power came back on in my area. It was cool and I was excited just to go back and watch the news to see how bad the quake was. It was also pretty terrible to see the damage and destruction caused on the big island. But the good thing and thank God for it was that nobody was killed and nobody was seriously injured either.

So, I’ve survived my 1st earthquake! I put that on my msn nick and I realised that it seemed like I ate a whole lot of ice cream from Swenson’s all by myself. That I survived many years ago by the way. Anyway, many people did lose their homes and stuff on the big island so if you guys can; spare a prayer for the victims of the earthquake. It would be dearly appreciated.