What an interesting 2 days. We got hit by a 7.0 earthquake on Saturday morning at 0530 (~50 miles from Oki). S-C-A-R-Y. Both of us were woken up by the house violently shaking for about 20 seconds. It took us a second to realize what was going on (we had a 5.3 hit about a month ago) and I said "we have to get next to the bed". Now MIchael knows why I said that (I have literature citing the triangle effect created during earthquakes). When it didn't seem to be stopping, we grabbed the dog and headed outside. Michael was supposed to grab the cat, as he walked past her coming down the stairs, but he didn't see her before we got outside. By that time the house stopped shaking. The best description I've read is that the house shook for the first 10-15 seconds and then it swayed for another 5-10 seconds. Our friends in the towers definitely felt all of the swaying!! As soon as we went back inside we turned on Fox News (only news channel on AFN at the time and b/c we thought AFN would have some sort of announcement) and they had breaking news about the earthquake and the tsunami warning that had been issued. Hmm ... hadn't thought about tsunamis until we saw that. So we stayed glued to the news on the tv and the internet (including facebook b/c our friends have good info sources!) to keep on top of what was going on. The tsunami waves were predicted to be about 2 meters, but were then downgraded to about .5 meter. The worst part for me was how bad Bailey freaked out. She went and hid under the bed in the guest room for a good 3 hours. When she finally came downstairs she walked around checking out the house with her tail down for about 30 minutes. I think she was downstairs when it hit and it was really loud. We had cabinets open up and some cans of food fell off the shelves in the pantry. She is back to her sassy self now though :)
Whew. Dodged two big bullets. Thank the Lord that He kept us safe.
Now this morning (Sunday) - I was woken up by loudspeakers announcing we were in another tsunami warning (from the 8.8 earthquake in Chili). I'm SO glad there is a loudspeaker system that base is using. Yesterday we weren't given any announcements (Not enough time? ... don't know.) but out in town they had all sorts of speaker announcements and helicopters out on the coast, etc. We are in a tsunami warning for another 4.5 hours here, but since it didn't affect Hawaii too much, we're hoping it is a minimal surge here.
Is all of this just preparation for our next duty station?!?!
***Update***
We were under the impression we were going to be okay here on the upper portion of Camp Lester, but alas, at 1440 the Marines came knocking on our doors telling us to get to Camp Foster. We loaded the kids up as fast as possible and headed out the door. The wave ended up being minimal (less than 1 meter), but better safe than sorry - right!?
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