Major earthquake off Pacific NW coast

[Greg]

Mahalo to all County employees, police, Public works, Fire, etc who are out right now keeping us safe. If something does happen, they are the ones on the line trying to rescue idiots.

[ericlp]

well, it looks like the 1 foot wave has passed.. Glad everyone is OK.

[Carey]

Hilo has an initial wave of 0.7ft per the 11:04 report:

NWS PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER EWA BEACH HI
1102 PM HST SAT OCT 27 2012

TO - CIVIL DEFENSE IN THE STATE OF HAWAII

SUBJECT - TSUNAMI WARNING SUPPLEMENT

A TSUNAMI WARNING CONTINUES IN EFFECT FOR THE STATE OF HAWAII.

AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

ORIGIN TIME - 0504 PM HST 27 OCT 2012
COORDINATES - 52.8 NORTH 131.8 WEST
LOCATION - QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS REGION
MAGNITUDE - 7.7 MOMENT

MEASUREMENTS OR REPORTS OF TSUNAMI WAVE ACTIVITY

GAUGE LOCATION LAT LON TIME AMPL PER
------------------- ----- ------ ----- --------------- -----
WAIANAE HI 21.4N 158.2W 0855Z 0.16M / 0.6FT 06MIN
HALEIWA HI 21.6N 158.1W 0844Z 0.43M / 1.4FT 10MIN
HANALEI HI 22.2N 159.5W 0843Z 0.17M / 0.6FT 22MIN
MAKAPU`U HI 21.3N 157.7W 0849Z 0.41M / 1.3FT 08MIN
HILO HAWAII 19.7N 155.1W 0834Z 0.21M / 0.7FT 44MIN

[Greg]

Yeah, so far so good. Hopefully nothing serious will happen over the next few hours. When it eventually does happen (and it will one day)It's the first responders who will put themselves in harms way, pulling drunken looky loos and skeptics out of the water....wreckage.....fire.....whatever. Scoff if you like, I'm saying Mahalo and not doing anything to make their job more difficult.

[Hunt Stoddard]

Kind of a major siren malfunction. This time nothing happened, but you really don't want to be stuck in a traffic jam an hour and twenty minutes before a major tsunami strike. I'm going to be a little annoyed if this isn't made into a big deal.

[coppercoin40]

wow, sorry to hear about siren failures in PUNA! I am 100 miles from the epicenter, we do not have tsunami sirens and I did not hear any police sirens either although we were under tsunami warning from about 7 - 10pm. We did not feel the quake or know about it until family from town called, they felt the quake as town is located at the tip of the islands peninsula with more open exposure to Dixon Entrance. As far as I know we only experienced a slight rise in the water. Our tides are so extreme that if we had an extreme high and larger tsunami at same time it would reek a ton of havoc for the community as it is built literally on the waterfront with many buildings on pilings, even portions of the main road! I hope all ended safely on the BI!

[Kapohocat]

Every one safe and sound here if lacking a little sleep. We went back to bed about 12:30 am. According to someone who stayed, sea level in tide pools didnt go up much - maybe 6" at most. Didnt even cover road at all.

NW kicked in even if sirens didn't, and every one knew by about 8:30 pm.

Again, thanks for all who called and asked us if we needed somewhere to stay. Robert's take is: grab the cat, the dog and the 3 day bag, all else is insured, and we got all our old pics in internet albums now, so we got this down.

[birdmove]

Noone at our house heard anything about this. I was at a chess tournament in Pahoa all day. Went home and we took our grandaughter to a haunted house, then we all went to Kaleos. We went to gas up my daughter's car and found a line that looked like the oil embargo of the '70s. So we were bagged getting gas and headed for home. Flipped on the radio and heard about it finally. We did hear sirens from our place up on 23rd after we got home. Hope there was no damage from this.

Jon in Keaau/HPP

[hotinhawaii]

We were at a party last night and tried to get information from the county and state civil defense websites. According to the Tribune Herald story this morning, the civil defense workers had so little to do right before the first waves arrived, they were munching on trail mix and watching the tv reports. Maybe it should be someone's job to update the website to say something other than "no emergency reports at this time."

[james weatherford]

We were falling asleep at 9:30. I thought I heard what sounded like sirens trying to go but not making it. Started to go on to sleep, then heard the same again. The siren at 6th & Makuu HPP is within sight of our house -- it did not work. We could hear sirens further away.
I got out of bed and turned the computer back on. Went to the Hawaii County Civil Defense Website. It said there were no notices at that time -- zero word about it. ...?!?!?!?!?...