Never Forget February 2010

"Are you serious?" I asked. Mitzi replied, "Of course I'm serious!! Would I be calling you if I weren't? You need to get everyone out of there right now. Bishop is driving to meet you at Lion's park." And then the line went dead. Being 1:30 am, I wasn't the picture of rapid response but the urgency of her voice got my adrenaline pumping and I was up. I woke up Ben, the other adult, to let him know and then started waking up the scouts. They needed to grab what they could, get some shoes on, and get going to meet up with bishop. And they needed to do it fast in order to make the 30 minute walk from the end of the runway back to the cars as short as possible.

Just an hour or so earlier, I had been asking one of the boys what he would do if a tsunami came during our camp. "Oh man, I would jump the fence and fly down the runway to the airport." He even knew where the gap in the barbed wire was so that he could make the vault easily. That discussion coupled with my thoughts over the past few weeks of what I would do in case a tsunami did come during our campout made the warning difficult to believe. Thus my incredulous question on the phone. I could easily picture a lavish prank being pulled. But she was totally serious and we were obedient and got out quickly and safely.

It was only after my shower at home that I became very worried about all my "stuff". I called Ben up and asked if he wanted to go back and get the tents and fishing poles and such (we had planned to complete the fishing merit badge Saturday morning). Like me, he couldn't stop thinking about all our gear and didn't want to leave it out there for other fishermen to pilfer or the tsunami to wash away. By then we had discovered the tsunami wasn't due until 8:51 am and we had time to hike back and pack up camp. So at 3:30 I was back on the trail with Ben and his boys. It took us an hour and a half to get there, pack up the tents, food, and bags, and return. After another shower, I spent a good 40 minutes letting the adrenaline subside and finally fell asleep at 6am.

For those who know me well, I like a lot of sleep and don't do well with little. So you can imagine how I was feeling at 9 when a pow wow broke out in the driveway outside my window. You see, our house is in a "tsunami safe" zone and friends of neighbors had showed up to wait out the tsunami. I can appreciate that and generally encourage it, but they may have well jumped into bed with me and snuggled up. No use fighting it though. I got up and spent the morning cleaning up the camp stuff, wishing to go back to sleep. Around 1:00pm, the tsunami warning was canceled. 2-3 foot waves had shown up right on time in Pago Pago every 20 minutes for the first little while, dropping to about half a foot an hour or so later. So Melinda asked what I wanted to do. The obvious activity was to fall asleep while watching a movie. She wanted to go swimming because it was beastly hot. We ended up at sliding rock swimming in the tsunami waves. It was clear they were still coming when the water would surge in higher than it should have and then out lower than it should have, about every ten minutes. I was still in a bad mood, and my wife noticed.

Later I went surfing with Ben's boys at Sliding Rock. It wasn't the best, but the sunset definitely was. Super golden light reflecting off the water. Getting brighter after it had completely set. That made my day.

Though I probably got 10 hours of sleep last night, waking up this morning at 9:30 was still too early. I was grumpy all day and still am as I write this. I hope you like the story. I'm going to bed.

ps. the tide gauge is still registering tsunami waves 37 hours after the first arrivals.