The Tsunami Countdown

by Boyd Morrison

  Kai went on with the story: “One of the common misconceptions about tsunamis is that they consist of one huge wave. In fact, tsunamis typically come in a series of waves created by the earthquake-displaced water rebounding up and down, with the third or fourth wave in the series usually the biggest. The waves alternate with troughs that are just as low as the waves are high, which is why the water recedes from the beach before every wave. The energy of each wave extends to the bottom of the ocean, accounting for the long periods between waves. Because people aren’t aware of these tsunami behaviors, they often put themselves in unnecessary danger.

  “There was a school in a town called Laupahoehoe to the northwest of Hilo,” he added. “In fact, the kids at the school were just about your age, and they saw an actual tsunami.”

  That brought a gasp from the kids.

  “I’ll even show you a couple of pictures from the event.” Kai clicked on the conference room projector, which was linked to his laptop. The first photo showed the schoolhouse as it had looked before the tsunami, perched only one hundred feet from the shore on a beautiful beach with swaying palm trees. Several smaller houses surrounded it.

  “This is where the kids went to school. Imagine being able to go to the beach for recess!” The children murmured at that thought.

  “When the second wave of the tsunami arrived at nine a.m., the kids were already in class. None of them had even seen the first small wave. A few of them who could see out the window noticed the receding water, and the rest of the children jumped up and ran out to see what was going on, with a schoolteacher following them. Some of them even ran into the bay to look at the exposed seafloor.

  “As they were playing around, the water started to come back in. It just seemed like a fast-rising tide at first, so they weren’t too worried as they ran back toward the schoolhouse. But the next thing they saw was a massive wave rushing across the bay at forty miles an hour.” Kai saw some quizzical looks and realized that he was accustomed to giving tours to Americans. Japan used kilometers. “That’s about seventy kilometers per hour.” He pointed at a girl sitting near him. “How fast do you think you can run?”

  The girl shrugged and spoke unexpectedly good English. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think you could run seventy kilometers per hour?”

  Her face turned crimson. She shook her head.

  “You’re right,” Kai said. “Actually, the fastest man in the world can only run about forty kilometers per hour, and even then he can only keep it up for a hundred meters.” He winked at the girl. “Next time you’re on the sidewalk, try to outrun a car that’s passing next to you on the road. If you can’t outrun that car, you can’t outrun a tsunami, either. Now, where was I?”

  A boy courteously raised his hand. Kai nodded, and the boy spoke in a measured voice. “The wave approached.” Apparently their English was much better than Kai’s Japanese.

  “Right. Well, despite what you may have seen in the movies, a tsunami is seldom a big curling wave like the ones you see on the Banzai Pipeline, the popular surfing spot on the North Shore. Instead, a tsunami is usually a churning mass of white foam that we call a bore.” Kai clicked to the next slide. It showed a wave approaching the beach that was the height of the trees. “This is a picture from Phuket, Thailand, during the Asian tsunami. As you can see, it looks a lot like the waves you see in a river rapid. This bore smashes everything in its path and carries the wreckage along with it, so that you have not only the water coming at you but also boats, trees, cars, pieces of buildings, and anything else it has scooped up.

  “Now, I’ve heard some kids come through here and say that if we ever got a real tsunami coming this way, they’d like to try to surf that big mama.” Some of the kids laughed and nodded. “Oh, you think you would too? Let me show you video of a relatively small tsunami coming into shore in a bay in Alaska.”

  Kai clicked on the icon, and the screen showed a cove with several fishing boats and a tiny village perched on the shore to the left. The jittery camera was held by an amateur videographer standing on a cliff. From the right, a white froth about fifteen feet high rushed toward the shore. The man holding the camera yelled something incomprehensible just as the wave smacked into a boat, immediately capsizing it. Other boats got caught in the onslaught as the wave swept the wreckage toward the shore. No one was on the boats, but small figures on the shore could be seen scrambling for higher ground. They all rushed to the peak of a small hill just as the wave crashed along the shore, washing over and through the buildings. One of the buildings collapsed.

  “That is the kind of wave the kids at Laupahoehoe Elementary School saw rushing toward them. Except the wave that day was twice the height of the one you just saw. It swept toward them at seventy kilometers per hour, ten meters high, and all they could do was run. Some made it to high ground because they were still in the school when they saw the wave coming in.” Kai put on his most serious face. “But sixteen children and five schoolteachers died that day. They never even found three of the children. They died because they didn’t understand what was about to happen until it was too late. And that’s why most of the 250,000 people in Southeast Asia died. They didn’t know the signs of a coming tsunami, and they didn’t have any warning.”

  A boy near Kai raised his hand. “But we have a warning system, don’t we?”

  “Yes, we do. Where do you live in Japan?”

  “Tokyo.”

  “Well, if an earthquake happens in Alaska, or even as far away as Chile, we would have at least three hours, and usually a lot longer, to warn everyone in Japan about a possible tsunami. But you could have an earthquake right off the coast of Japan, and people would have only a few minutes to get to high ground before the tsunami hit. That’s why it’s important for you to know the warning signs yourself.”

  Kai had gone over the warning signs earlier in the tour, but kids often weren’t paying attention at that point, so he had come up with a technique to make the warning signs more memorable. He closed the laptop and looked at each of the children in turn.

  “Now I have a little quiz for you, and I’ve got prizes for the person who can yell out the answer first. When you hear the tsunami warning siren at the beach and you can’t get to a TV or radio to find out what’s going on, what do you do?”

  A girl to Kai’s right blurted out an answer. “You go to high ground!”

  “That’s correct,” he said. He turned and called out, “Bilbo, bring the prize!”

  Bilbo trotted out from the room behind him with a little bag dangling from his mouth. Kai pointed at the girl and the dog walked over and dropped the bag in front of her. The girl squealed with delight and gave Bilbo a pat before he walked back over to Kai. They had practiced that routine all year, and Bilbo was getting good at it.

  “Very good,” Kai said. “And remember to get an adult to help you whenever you can. Next question: When you feel an earthquake and you’re at the beach, what do you do?”

  Another girl at the back screamed out before the others, “Get to high ground!”

  “Exactly. Bilbo?”

  While Bilbo took the next bag to the student, a voice that was definitely not a child’s whispered in Kai’s ear.

  “I can’t believe you are still doing that cheesy trick with the dog,” Brad said. “You are such a nerd.”

  “Excuse me,” Kai said to the teacher, pushing Brad back into the reception area. “What are you doing here?”

  “The guys from Ma‘alea chickened out. Since I have the morning free now, I thought I’d come by and see what’s up.”

  “I’m not done yet. Can you just stay out of the way for a little while?”

  “No problem.”

  When Kai returned, the teacher, a pretty, petite woman in her thirties, raised her hand. “Excuse me, Dr. Tanaka.” Out of the corner of his eye, Kai saw Brad still leaning on the door frame, smiling at her.

  “Yes, Ms. Yamaguchi.”

  “How high is ‘high gr
ound’?”

  “That’s a very good question,” Kai said. “We develop inundation maps that show us where the water would reach on dry land, usually about thirty feet above sea level. You can find them in all the phone books.” Kai held up the tsunami evacuation route sign he kept around for the tour. The blue pictograph depicted a series of small stylized white waves followed by a final large wave. “And you should see this sign all over Hawaii and something very close to it in Japan. It will tell you where to go. Any other questions?”

  Nobody raised a hand, so Kai continued. “Now the last question: If you’re at the beach and you see the water receding very quickly from the beach, what do you do?”

  This time all the kids yelled the answer simultaneously: “Get to high ground!”

  “Well, since you all answered, you all deserve a prize.” Kai thrust some bags into Brad’s hands. “Here, make yourself useful.”

  As they were handing out the gift bags, Reggie walked into the room. He had an odd look on his face, as if he had uncomfortable news to deliver.

  “You done?” he said.

  “Yes. In fact, I’ve probably already kept them longer than they planned.” Kai said his good-byes to the teacher and kids. “Brad, would you show Ms. Yamaguchi the way out?”

  “My pleasure,” Brad said, leading her to the door.

  Kai turned to Reggie. “What’s going on? You look like you just swallowed a bug.”

  “It’s Christmas Island. We were expecting a telemetry report from the tide gauge five minutes ago. It never came.”

  “That’s funny. Didn’t we just get a reading from it an hour ago?”

  “Sure did. Everything was fine.”

  “Did you check the equipment on our end?” Kai asked, a sudden chill creeping up his spine. He didn’t like where this was going.

  “Just finished. It’s not us. That leaves two possibilities. Either the tide gauge is malfunctioning …”

  Kai completed Reggie’s sentence. “Or it’s not there anymore.”

  NINE

  9:35 a.m.

  As the Japanese students filed out to their van, Kai followed Reggie back into the warning center’s telemetry room. Reggie’s calm was now replaced by an edginess Kai had only seen a few times. “Kind of an odd fluke,” Reggie said. “Don’t you think?”

  “What’s happening?” said Brad, entering the room. He saw the tension, and his eyes lit up. “Is it a tsunami?”

  “Look, Brad,” Kai said, “I don’t mind if you want to hang around, but we could get very busy. If you’re going to get in the way, you’ll have to leave.”

  Brad put up his hands in a gesture of appeasement. “No problem. I just want to watch. This is fun. Usually, your job is so dull.” He retreated to the other side of the room and took a seat.

  Kai leaned over Reggie as he typed into his computer. “You think the busted tide gauge is too coincidental?” Kai asked.

  “I don’t know,” Reggie said. “We detect a seismic disturbance in the general vicinity, and that’s the exact time for the tide gauge to go on the fritz?”

  “It hasn’t failed since I’ve been here, but you said it has in the past?”

  “Well, it has broken down two times in the past three years: once from a short circuit and once from a storm that knocked over the satellite uplink antenna.”

  “Is there a storm in the area?”

  “I just checked. There is one, but the storm is northwest of Christmas Island. Shouldn’t be affecting it.”

  “How big would the tsunami have to be to take out that tide gauge? Is it a mark seven?”

  “Yeah. The wave would have to be at least eight meters high to take out a mark seven gauge.”

  Over twenty feet high. High enough to cover the entire island.

  “Who’s our contact on Christmas Island? Steve something?”

  “Steve Bryant. He does a little maintenance on the gauge from time to time. No answer, either at his home or his office. In fact, I can’t even get his voice mail. It won’t ring through. All I get is a fast busy signal.”

  “Let’s try again. The phones down there aren’t very reliable. You keep trying to get Steve, and I’ll call the operator.”

  The operator didn’t have any better luck getting through, so Kai had her attempt several different numbers they had in the Rolodex for Christmas Island. None of them went through.

  “Can you get the main island operator for me?” Kai asked.

  She tried without success. Just that fast busy signal again.

  “All I’m getting is an out-of-order tone, sir,” she said.

  “Is that unusual?”

  “The power goes out down there on a regular basis. It always shuts everything down, including communications. Comms also failed once when there was a fire at the switching station on the island, but we haven’t had any problems lately. It’s probably just a power outage. Would you like me to continue trying?”

  “Yes, please.” Kai told her who he was and asked her to call him back when she got through. Their inability to get through to anyone was troubling, and Kai couldn’t help feel like there was pattern to all of this that he was missing. Still, he didn’t have the hard data to show that it was anything other than a coincidence.

  Reggie didn’t have any more luck contacting someone than Kai did.

  “Any signal from the tide gauge?” Kai asked, hopeful that it was just a temporary glitch.

  “Not a blip,” Reggie said.

  Kai told Reggie the operator’s theory about a power outage.

  “That’s a fine idea,” Reggie said, “but the tide gauge has a battery backup.”

  Kai had forgotten about that. “It has enough juice for twenty-four hours, right?”

  “Up to twenty-four hours at full capacity. Of course, that’s if the battery is charged. Steve has been known to put off tide gauge maintenance in the past. It’s possible the battery is dead. Then a power outage would definitely take the gauge offline.”

  “So we were expecting a wave to reach Christmas Island at 9:25 a.m.,” Kai said, summing up the series of coincidences. “The tide gauge was supposed to send a signal at 9:30 a.m. But there was a power outage on the island that started sometime between when we received the last tide gauge reading at 8:30 and when we were supposed to receive the 9:30 signal. And because the battery backup was not charged, the power outage knocked out the comm equipment on the tide gauge.” Despite the skepticism in his voice, the scenario was possible. Kai would have felt better if the 8:30 signal had also failed to come in, but there it was on the log sheet, right on time.

  Reggie opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated.

  “What?” Kai said.

  “Well, I just thought I should bring it up. Do you want me to send out a warning?”

  “A warning?” Brad said. “Oh, this’ll be good.”

  “Brad, please,” Kai said, putting up his hand to show that he wasn’t in the mood for Brad’s giddy enthusiasm. He needed to concentrate.

  Sending out a tsunami warning would be a bold step. The situation didn’t fit any established scenarios. Kai would simply be going on gut.

  Issuing a tsunami warning was not a responsibility that he took lightly, particularly because he’d been on the job for less than a year. Doing so would cause a massive disruption to businesses and tourists in Hawaii, not to mention the enormous cost associated with an evacuation.

  In 1994 a huge earthquake near the Kurile Islands in Russia measuring a magnitude of 8.1 prompted the PTWC to issue a tsunami warning for the Pacific region. Despite getting tide measurements at Midway and Wake islands that indicated a surge could be expected in Hawaii, they couldn’t predict how big the waves would be. In fact, a tsunami did arrive, but it never rose above three feet. The tsunami warning had cost the state an estimated $30 million.

  More recently, the PTWC had issued a warning based on a magnitude 7.6 quake off the coast of Alaska, but when tide data showed that no destructive waves were expected, the warning wa
s called off forty-five minutes later. The financial cost had been minimal, but it didn’t help the public trust the system. Many news programs had repeatedly shown videos of frightened residents evacuating the city, even after the warning had been rescinded. The false alarm was implicated as just another failure of federal disaster readiness, even though they had followed procedure to the letter.

  If Kai issued a warning based on just his hunch and it turned out to be another false alarm, not only would he be criticized by everyone from the governor to the NOAA administrator, but the public would get so frustrated by the repeated false alarms that they might start to ignore subsequent warnings. A repeat of the full 1994 warning now would be even more expensive than it had been then, at least $50 million.

  “So you think we should issue the warning?” Kai asked Reggie.

  “No, not at all. I just wanted to throw it out there. But you’re the one who gets the big bucks to make the call.”

  Kai paused. The signal loss was a strange coincidence, yes, and he couldn’t help thinking that there was some small nugget of information that he wasn’t seeing that would offer an explanation for what was happening. But the raw data didn’t justify a tsunami warning. Historically, the earthquake just wasn’t strong enough. Even with a stronger earthquake, a tsunami was unlikely.

  “Kai?” Reggie said. “What should we do?”

  Kai sighed. Despite his misgivings, he just couldn’t issue a warning. Not yet. Not without knowing more.

  “We’re going to wait,” Kai said. “Let’s hope the power comes back on soon and we can get on with our day.”

  Reggie nodded and got back on the phone while Kai tried to ignore the nagging little voice in his head that said he was making the wrong decision.

  TEN

  9:42 a.m.

  As Teresa now saw, the Memorial Day holiday’s beautiful weather brought out not only the travelers from the mainland but what seemed like every local on the island. Waikiki was packed. By the time they pulled into the Grand Hawaiian’s parking lot, it was nearly full. “But Aunt Rachel let Lani get her ears pierced,” Mia said as they got out of the Jeep. “And my friend Monica got a tattoo on her ankle.”