Ron Shoots

Hawaii experienced a 6.6 earthquake at 7:08am Sunday morning. Sunday was also my youngest son’s thirteenth birthday! We live about 50 miles from the epi-center.

WOW! I have never felt anything like that before. I was in the garage with my son Alex when stuff started shaking. My Excursion parked on the concrete driveway was rocking a foot from side to side. (thought my Ford was a jumpin’ low-rider for a minute…) We ran into the house to get Debi and Josh out and they were already standing in the doorways which is the safest place. Josh said “Does this mean a tsunami is coming?” so in 2 minutes we were in the truck. When we got up to higher ground, a hundred other cars were already in the same parking lot. We could not get a single radio station on the radio and there were no tsunami sirens going off. All power was out as well- no traffic lights, etc. After 20 minutes, one local radio station finally came on and said there was no tsunami generated so we headed home.

Here’s a map of the epicenter- we live at the orange dot…

Seeking information

I called Sara who was at the studio and there was no info available online for the first 30 minutes or so, then talked to Nicole who was watching the TV and I listened over my cellphone. There was surprising little info for the first hour or so. (Thanks Sara! Thanks Nicole!)

Power back on about 4 hrs later, we only lost a couple pieces of art glass that fell off the shelves. Sounds like the Big Island had significant damage with hotels and hospitals evacuated.

What a way to start Alex’s birthday!