In Hawaii on vacation staying at an ocean front condo, I had the opportunity to experience the tsunami first hand.

At 6am Saturday morning a loud siren went off and I tried to pretend it was nothing. A minute later a loud speaker on a moving fire truck announced, “Tsunami alert: evacuate your building.” 

Hearing the word tsunami, I jumped out of bed and stuck my head out the door of my condo to find an emergency response person telling everyone to leave the building, or if we planned to stay and were above the 3^rd floor we needed food and water for 5 days. It turned out that the tsunami was expected shortly after 11am, and we decided to go to the neighborhood market to buy food and water. There was quite a crowd gathering there. It is a small market, and the only one opened for some distance.  I put together a half dozen large bottles of water and a bag of canned food that I thought I would eat cold given the alternative. Returning home, my partner and I filled the bathtub with water for the toilet and all of the glasses and bowls with water for drinking.

People on the lower floors were madly packing up their belongings and moving them to friends’ condos on upper floors.  Everyone with cars filled them up and drove away to higher ground. In a couple of hours the Diamond Head area was empty of cars, traffic and for the most part people. It was very quiet.

Kapolani Park on Saturday morning is normally filled with people walking, biking, practicing Tai Chi and setting up picnics. At 11am I walked up to the 12^th floor walk-way to watch the tsunami from a safe distance. By this time the park across the street was empty with two lone cars remaining.

As I watched the ocean, sometime after 11:30am the wave pattern changed: The water pulled back and the reef became visible within a few minutes. By noon the sea had come back and the ocean looked the same. Radio and television announcers made a point of saying there may be more waves later in the day, but a few hours later the alert was cancelled.  This was not unlike aftershocks from earthquakes.

Breathing a great sigh of relief, my partner and I felt we had done a good job in a short time getting prepared for the tsunami.  Both of us have lived in San Francisco for many years and knew that being without power for several days is a real possibility in a serious earthquake. We came away from this experience planning to update our earthquake supplies the minute we returned home.

As we all know, some neighborhoods in San Francisco are more vulnerable than others to earthquakes. After my recent experience here in Hawaii I cannot recommend more strongly the importance of keeping emergency food, water and supplies on hand in case of an emergency no matter where you live in San Francisco. Once a year renew your supplies. The food can be eaten or donated to a charity organization.

Keep in mind it best to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.