Aloha All,
We drove around yesterday. Palani Road –our road to town was covered with rocks. Back hoes have been clearing the debris all day. Now the road is open in both directions.
The Hulihee Palace is totally cracked. Most of the rock walls that were dry stacked crumbled. The schools and hospital took a beating. The hospital is still closed due to falling debris. Yesterday the teachers went to school but they held the kids home so they could asses the damages and clean up.
We lost one rock wall and lots of glasses and pottery. The after shocks keep coming. We just had another one a few minutes ago.
Oahu still has parts without power.
Most of the damage was on the North part of the island. In Hawi the road cracked open and part of another road/bridge sunk in. There are about 70 bridges that still need to be inspected. Kawaihae Harbor is closed. The docks aren’t safe; the water line is damaged. The barges are being sent to Hilo for docking.
One guy was out surfing and felt a big bump in the water. He thought a shark or turtle had bumped him. He looked back at the shore and all the cars were bouncing up and down.
Another friend has large glass sliding doors and they shock right off the track and fell on to the ground. Lucky they didn’t break.
There was a horse show in Kamuela Sunday. People were unloading and warming up their horses. Before the quake the horses started bucking and ran through a crowd of people. Then the quake started and the trailers were rolling over and more horses became wild and broke free. They were running across the highway totally out of control.
The ironman race is this Saturday. Talk about another thing to compound their nerves. They are riding along the queen’s highway next to boulders larger then a car. The road to Hawi (turn around point) is partially gone in one lane. They have determined that the race will go on and the road will be ok for bikes to cross.
The mountain top above Kealakekua Bay (where they buried all of the royalty) broke free and fell into the bay. They said it was a huge explosion and all of the houses rocked.
The hotels in the Waikoloa area really rocked. The Mauna Kea hotel had huge slabs of concrete fall from a few stories up. Everyone is so thankful it happened on a Sunday. A school day would have been really bad. Most people were in bed when it hit at 7:07am.
The people here know about hurricanes and storms so they know to be prepared. Rice and toilet paper and you are good to go. The tourists on the other hand don’t have a clue what is happening and many raced to the airport to get out. (Bad idea since they were all closed down). You can either roll with it or freak out.
Being from California originally I thought I was used to the earth moving. But nothing compares to this magnitude and it just kept going and going. It felt like a full minute of rocking and glass breaking. It was probably only 20 seconds but it was like riding a wild bronco.
My hats off to Hawaii County for getting on top of everything right away. The power for the Big Island was back up in 6 hours. They kept warning us on the radio not to open the refrigerator and too conserve water. Be prepared to hunker down until they can restart the power.
The heavy rains hitting the island chain has not helped things. Last night we had about 3 inches of rain. Slamming rain and thunder most of the night.
At least my garden is watered and my car has been washed.
Take care and keep in touch,
Signed, “Shake and Bake”
Sooze
No comments:
Post a Comment