Evacuation Supplies

Last night I got a text at 2:30 am - "Are you ok?"
Since I had no idea what my friend was talking about I had to text back. Turns out there was a massive earthquake in Japan and a tsunami was headed towards Hawaii. I woke up my parents and we had 20 minutes to evacuate the beach-side condo in which we were staying, before the wave was estimated to hit.

I've only visualized those nasty 30' tsunamis with massive destruction, and that's not at all what hit here, but it doesn't make a difference while you're deciding what items to pack in your bag so you can run out the door and seek higher ground as soon as possible.

We sat at the West Maui airport from 3 until about 8:30. It was too dark to see the water, but I think just after sunrise we saw a 4th surge. Reports on the radio say a couple of the harbors on Maui had 6-8' surges and that was the worst in the Hawaiian islands. We were very lucky.

When we returned home, I assessed my supplies, and here's what I packed in the 10minutes of sleepy urgency:

(top row)
- travel pillow (accidentally left in the bag)
- long lens for camera
- shorts!
(middle row)
- loaf and a half of bread
- cheese crackers
- chocolate covered macademia nuts (these were pretty much just the foods within reach)
- water bottle
- sunscreen
- blankee (can't just let it ride the waves on its own!)
(bottom)
- laptop and charger
- phone charger
- keys and money
- pencil
- sweatshirt

There's a few things, in retrospect, that might have been good had we actually lost all the rest of our belongings, but who can really prepare for a disaster?

It's horrible to see the news today, but we can't turn away.