March 11 was such an eventful day that it's taken me more than 48 hours to get around to writing about it. Friday was the day my baby was set to fly off into the sunset to Hawaii on the first leg of his journey back to Alabama for cataract surgery. First, the plane, which is already a "red eye" flight was delayed 2 hours, supposedly leaving at 9:30, then a Tsunami hit Japan (as I'm sure you all know), and our flat, tiny island in the middle of the Pacific went into panic mode. In fourteen years living on the atoll, we have never had to "vertically evacuate" due to a tsunami or even a tropical cyclone or storm threat. Usually, these types of natural disasters begin their formation here, but do not strike land, except for maybe some heavy rains and high winds. Otherwise, these very low lying coral atolls would never have survived in the ocean as long as they have.
According to wikipedia.com, a Tsunami comes from the Japanese word for "harbor wave," and "is a series of waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water." They are often referred to as "tidal waves," but they have nothing to do with tides. Both produce waves of water that move inland, but tsunami waves are much greater and last a longer period of time. There are a few natural barriers that keep Tsunamis from destroying coastal regions, one of which we are surrounded by in the Marshall Islands, CORAL REEFS. These reefs act as natural breakwaters providing a physical barrier that reduces the force of the waves before they reach the shore. Our neighboring islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, tend to be surrounded on the coast by mangrove forests, which provide the other natural barrier to the tsunamis potentially devastating waves. The mangrove trees are like natural shock absorbers against the water's impact. Once again, nature proves stronger than anything else in this world protecting us when cared for and used properly. Unfortunately for Japan, natural barriers are rare as they are the hardest hit by Tsunamis, over 195 there so far according to the wikipedia website. Even though we are fairly protected due to our natural barriers, it's better to be safe than sorry because nature is never totally predictable, so our sirens began sounding around 10 pm to let us know we needed to go to our designated shelters, which for my oldest son and I was on the second floor of our home, thank goodness. I took a gallon of fresh water upstairs along with a can opener and some food and settled down to watch the news and local roller channel for more information. Thankfully, my son had gone to sleep about 30 minutes before the sirens began, and amazingly, he slept through the whole thing!
The funny thing is I was more concerned about my youngest son on the airplane with his father than I was about all of us on the island. Tsunamis and earthquakes have been known to devastate places like Hawaii in the past, although not as often as in Japan, and that's just where the plane was heading. My fears only grew when I was on the phone with my best friend (who had to wake up both her children and head to a nearby friend's house with a second story to shelter in) when we heard the plane take off yet another hour later than planned (10:30 pm). Why would they want to leave and fly into an island evacuating and preparing for the big waves? What if they can't land? It's not as if there are a lot of other places nearby they could proceed to for an emergency landing when their fuel ran low. Of course, it turned out to be just fine as the waves caused minimal damage to the coast of Hawaii by the time it reached them around 3:30 in the morning, but my stomach was definitely knotted up from the tension of the tsunami warnings until I was able to hear from my son the following day around lunch time. As for the end of my Friday night, after a final late night phone call from home to check up on us, I fell fully asleep around 1 pm, thankful that the danger for us had passed and whispering prayers for those in Japan who were not so lucky.
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