Tsunami And The Day After On Maui

Well it's the Day after the Chile Earthquake generated Tsunami that had Hawaii and plenty of other places watching and waiting for a destructive Tsunami to hit.

As it turned out, we we're lucky this time. On Maui, Kahului Harbor, about 2 miles from my home, had only about a three foot wave. The Maui News has some good pictures of what I described in my earlier blog and how the early morning looked like a Friday Night and Gas Stations were full.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, it's the Earthquakes in the Alaskan and South American regions that are of most concern historically to Hawaii.

• August 17, 1906 an 8.4 earthquake in the area of Chile did do some damage on Maui.
• February 23, 1923 an 8.3 earthquake from the Alaskan area did some major damage on Maui.
• April 1, 1946 an 8.6 earthquake from the Alaskan area did major damage and many died, especially having been on April Fool's Day, many just didn't take it serious enough.
• November 4, 1952 an 8.2 earthquake from the Alaskan area did some major damage.
• March 9, 1957 an 8.3 earthquake from the Alaskan areadid minor flooding and damage.
• May 23, 1960 an 9.5 earthquake in the Chile area did Major damage.
• May 27, 1964 an 9.2 earthquake from the Alaskan area did some minor damage.
• February 28, 2010 an 8.8 earthquake from the Chile area did no damage.

So as you can see, we may have been lucky enough to come through yesterday's Tsunami unscathed, but based on the past and the amount of earthquake activity in the pacific region we are not immune to another big one hitting.

No one mentioned Japan's earthquake earlier that morning in the 7+ range, probably because there was nothing much generated by it, but there has been plenty of activity in the pacific and elsewhere.

Hopefully some lessons were learned and maybe we will look closer at things like sewer plants and power plants that are built at nearly sea level and next to the ocean. Infrastructure changes to allow for people to be moved and supported properly. It all takes money, but we need the work and I would rather see it go to improving these things that to straighten a short piece of road or some of the many almost ridiculous projects that seem to suck up the money.