Earthquake

Well on Sunday I was in my very first earthquake. The epicenter was about 200 miles off the coast of the Big Island was measured to be 6.5 followed by a 5.5 after shock. The first lasted about 2 seconds and the second about 15 seconds. I've never been in an earthquake before so it was a shock to me. When it happened the first was over so quick, by the time I got out of bed it was over. During the second I was standing in my room, then in the doorway to my room. I know its supposed to be the stucturally safest place to stand, but if the house is gonna come down, um... it won't help. The house itself shook quite a bit. Think of a rollercoaster and how you get shaken up, its similar but not quite the same :-)

After it was all over we (roommates and I) turned on the TV to see what was up. That lasted all of, maybe, 5 min. before the power went out. So no radio, no TV, no lights, etc. Not to bad as it was morning still. I typed to call Melissa but didn't have any luck with the phone, all circuits were busy so I texted her just to make sure everything was ok. I got a voicemail from her so moved on with calls. After I tried to call some people back home and I got ahold of Carmine. She didn't here about the quake yet (it just happened :-) so she turned on CNN and relayed me some information. Not much else I could so so I got up, had a nice hot shower and hopped on my bike to ride around. The first thing I noticed was no sound from most anywhere. Some people were in their cars with the radios on, but other than that just kids playing.

Once I was downtown heading to Waikiki I noticed that there were no street lights. Well most everyone was treating inersections like stop signs. You did see the occational idiot just blowing threw them though. Once I got into Waikiki not much was going on, no electricity can put a damper on things. The ABC stores were open, but would only let 2-3 people in at a time. Employees were escorting them around the store as it was dark. After riding around for an hour or so I got a call from Melissa. Her phone was dead so she was on a payphone. We met up for a bit before I headed home. Riding through town again the cops were out in most major inersections. Not sure they were helping much though..

I ended up getting power back at 12:25AM.