Hawaii News

Archive for February, 2010

Tourists lined the lanais of high-rise hotels and sightseers clustered along Hawaii’s cliffside highways to take in the spectacle of a potentially destructive tsunami that turned out to be more like an undulating tide.

Dozens of ships headed to open water, 40,000 to 50,000 locals and tourists scrambled to safety and high ground, and communities from Hilo to Waikīkī transformed into instant ghost towns yesterday as the Islands braced for a tsunami that rolled in as merely an odd ocean surge.

In two months, federal, state, county and other emergency first responders hold an annual weeklong hurricane disaster exercise and drills. This year, they will add several problems stemming from yesterday’s tsunami response

All over this coastal town yesterday, people gathered at hillside vantage points — their ears to portable radios, their hands gripping binoculars — to watch a tsunami come in that some feared would rival the 1960 waves that killed 61 people in Hilo, toppled buildings and homes and swept away cars.

State Civil Defense leaders kept busy on Saturday, working around the clock trying to keep everyone safe.

Today’s Pacific West Conference doubleheader between the University of Hawaii at Hilo and Grand Canyon University has been rained out.

Due to the rain out, 3 p.m. doubleheaders will be played on Monday and Tuesday, March 1 and 2 at Wong Stadium.

Globe at Night is an annual 2-week campaign in March that helps to address the light pollution issue locally as well as globally. This year the campaign is March 3-16, 2010. You are invited along with everyone all over the world to record the brightness of your night sky by matching its appearance toward the constellation Orion with star maps of progressively fainter stars.

Motorists rushed to gas pumps Saturday morning (Feb. 27) in Hilo to fill up and get out of town before roads were closed. Some gas stations had closed early, which meant the few stations left open had lines of vehicles snaked out of driveways onto the streets. People seemed patient, waited their turn and headed for higher ground.

Karin Stanton | Hawaii 24/7 Contributing Editor
By 9:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26, Hawaii County officials were gathered in the Civil Defense headquarters in Hilo, anxiously waiting for the next tsunami update.
Slightly more than 16 hours later, they were all still there, anxiously waiting to hear whether the danger truly had passed by Hawaii’s islands.
Director of [...]

Director of Pacific Tsunami Warning Center Charles McCreery ready to cancel watch for Hawaii.
“We’re not seeing anything alarming. The wave was not any bigger than we expected. In fact, it might have been a little smaller,” McCreery said. “We’re all in agreement out here, we can end this thing for Hawaii.”
Mayor Billy Kenoi, who spent [...]

Hawaii was spared any damage Saturday after a tsunami generated by an 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Chile reached a maximum height of just three feet on one island.

Japan Meteorological Agency’s official Yasuo Sekita speaks near the graphic showing the seismic center of an earthquake in Chile during a news conference at the agency in Tokyo Saturday, Feb.

A deafening roar rose from the convulsing earth as buildings groaned and clattered.

Feb. 27: Dr. Charles McCreery at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, studying a computer graphic showing the possible path of tsunami waves.