DUE TO ARRIVE. It starts around 12:30AM. J and I both wake up as our bed shakes back and forth a bit and the shelving and side tables rattle.
Kim: Earthquake.
J: Yup. (10 seconds pass with continued shaking) I'm going to get Indigo.
By the time J gets into Indigo's room, the shaking has slowed. I hear a mumbled conversation, Indigo half asleep. J returns, climbs back into bed and reaches for his phone to check the USGS website and find out the epicenter and size. It feels like a medium-ish quake, not quite the shaker of a few years ago that moved our fridge, but it lasted a little while and woke us up, so...
Then our phones buzz:
"Emergency Alert. Tsunami danger on the coast. Go to high ground or move inland. Listen to local news." J jumps out of bed and starts to climb the stairs up to our main floor.
Kim: Should I be following you?
J: Yes!
Still dubious that we are in any sort of peril, I climb the stairs. We open the front door. Indeed, college students from up the street are running to their cars, firing them up, and gunning them down the road. A fire vehicle flies by and moments later we hear the official Seward Tsunami alarm sound. Officer Morgan, who lives the next block down, has his blue lights flashing in his driveway. To top off the dramatic scene, it's a snow storm, our first in weeks, snow swirling in the glow of the street lights and building up on the roads and cars.
I type madly into my phone:
Christy - there's a tsunami warning. My friend and her family are building a house and renting in the meanwhile, a sea-level home in Lowell Point a mile past Seward heading towards open ocean. She quickly types back:
Packed the kids and the pets and went up top, left the rest.
Back inside, we follow the original text message instructions and tune our radio to the local Seward radio station. Wolf, the high school theater guru and SAKTown Talk radio host is broadcasting from a few blocks away, trying his darnedest to share what he knows about the earthquake, the tsunami warning, and appropriate action to be taken. With several filler-music moments while Wolf "just looks something up real quick," we start to get a more accurate picture of the situation. An 8 on the Richter Scale. Kodiak is expected to be hit by a wave at 1:45AM. Seward, 10 minutes later. Homer, after that. And although our house is above the tsunami impact line in downtown, the lower elevation areas surrounding us will likely fill with water and ultimately debris, leaving us trapped on an island of devastation.
We have one hour.
The evacuation unfolds in a bizarre slow motion. I can almost hear a soundtrack of cheesy elevator music playing in the back of my mind. Dee, da-dee, dee dee... If you think about the word emergency, you think of fires, car crashes, bee stings leading to anaphylaxis - situations where you need to move quickly, prioritize quickly and hope for the best. Not this. We have one hour. We can chat about where the passports and birth certificate folder is (Sorry, Mom. Haven't gotten that safety deposit box yet). We can grab bunches of kale from the fridge for Kevins the guinea pig and add it to the make-shift laundry basket pet carrier. We can snag The Fellowship of the Ring, our current family read aloud. Some cheese sticks and lime flavored tortilla chips, Lily the American Girl Doll, phones, my computer, the cat carrier from down in the shed, extra layers, headlamps.
At this point, Indigo is awake and she is
not having any of this slow packing plan. She wants us to GET OUT NOW.
We clear snow off Sally Ride, heat her up, pack her up, and hit the road. As we drive down main street, we see flashing lights of emergency vehicles. EMTs are knocking on doors, ensuring that people in low elevation housing who might need assistance get it. We see lines built up at the first gas station we come to...
Kim: Do you think we should...?
J: Smart one. Get gas.
The cheesy elevator music
really kicks in as I stand next to the van in the snow, filling the tank like I always do, Indigo and J safe inside, listening to the radio.
Texts are coming in. Friends from Kenai, Soldotna, the outskirts of Seward who felt the quake and saw the cell alerts.
Are you okay? Are you evacuating? Do you want to come here? We love you...
We arrive at the high school, along with 100's of other people, with plenty of time to spare. J stays in the car listening to Wolf and watching ZigZag and Kevins while Indigo and I head in to see the scene, connect with others. Old, young, families, couples, police, teachers, pets... all of us, brought together at 1:30 in the morning, waiting.
Have you watched YouTube videos of tsunamis? Or the Weather Channel survivor specials with footage from folks in Japan back in 2011?
J and I text back and forth. I can't hear the radio in the school office because too many people are talking. J shares banter from Facebook; Kodiak is reporting water receding... A buoy is registering a 30 foot displacement... Goodness. Meanwhile, Wolf is leveraging the internet and folks calling in to become as knowledgeable as he can. He's looking at wave propagation studies, the angle of the bay, city maps, computer models.... Strangely enough, besides Facebook, the internet is quiet. No one is transmitting what is happening or what to expect. Suddenly, the good old fashioned radio is our only lifeline. And a small town radio talk show host turned tsunami expert.
Indigo connects with elementary school friends. Some older kids start a pick up basketball game in the gym. Old ladies take their little dogs outside to pee. The police officers get reports that the Pit Bar (yes, Chip... that Pit Bar) has a record breaking number of patrons for a weeknight. Tonight we're gonna party like it's 1999?
1:55AM arrives on the hallway clocks. The high school sits atop a hill at the base of Mt. Benson with views of the ocean... when it's light. In the dark and the snow, we have no idea what's happening down in town. Wolf isn't reporting anything and the police radios are quiet.
2:00AM arrives. 2:15AM. 2:30AM. How do these computer models work? How
do you calculate the arrival time of a wave traveling over hundreds of miles through various depths, around various corners of land?
How long do we need to wait?
A wave never comes. Not to Kodiak. Not to Seward. Not to Homer. This particular type of earthquake didn't displace water in an upward motion, so no wave was generated. By 3:30AM Officer Morgan gives the all clear and we all snake our way down the hill from the high school.
Exhausted, we fall into bed a little while later, taking solace in the 2 hour delay granted to coastal community schools impacted by the alert. And the fact that we are safe and our sweet little winter wonderland town is still calm and bright.
