Earthquake this morning

We had an earthquake in Kona this morning. This is how the earthquake was for me.

I was driving away from Starbuck’s with my traditional Sunday morning drive-through cuppa joe and heading to the shop early. My vehicle started to fishtail and jump, the road rippling off to the left while I jittered to the right. I got the vehicle under control, braked and pulled over, thinking I must have blown out two tires. I stepped out, circled the vehicle, and found nothing wrong. The streets were still dead because it was early for a Sunday. As I got back in the vehicle, it shook like a wet dog. My first thought was maybe it is time to lose some weight. But then I tried to shake it like that again, and realized that my body mass was not yet sufficient to move an SUV like that.

My next clue was the traffic lights which were bobbing and swaying differently from the trees in the breeze. That’s when the light went on. Actually, the traffic lights were out, but I figured out it must have been an earthquake. I went to see David where he was setting up for the morning, and he had experienced the same sort of drive as mine, the lightweight backside of the pickup lifting and screeching back down as the road jumped under his moving vehicle. He saw people watching him and thought he was experiencing truck problems until he saw some training triathletes staggering on the roadside and a runner fell down.

We both checked in with each other and a few people nearby, and it seemed like the quake was as mild as we had experienced it in the vehicles. I went on to the shop and David continued his work at the airfield. Our kids woke up to the quake. They went with Cindy to a friends’ house and hung out there.

Once I opened the shop, it started to sink in that this was quite a shake. The power was out and the phones were down, so I sent a silent SOS to David. A few minutes later, David walked in the shop. I was worried about being able to open on time... which is silly now that I realize it took three of us four hours to get everything out of the grips of gravity. With all the mess and far-flung products, we had only a handful of damaged goods and a few dents in displays. We did some business, and cleaned, and some time after noon I looked at David and said, “I’m wiped out!” Since no one had entered for a few hours, we closed the shop, grabbed the kids, and came home.

I tried to take a nap and started to think What If. What if the quake had happened with a full shop? It would have been a terrifying racket, pitch black in the warehouse where there are no windows, and a floor covered in a pick-up-stix-like array of art materials. Upstairs, whole racks of paint tubes were toppled over and canvases blocked the walkway. Or what if the road had been moving in heavy traffic like our rush hours? What if Costco had been open and the high shelves of products stacked on palettes... And then I made myself stop. None of that had happened.

I decided to go for a swim, since things looked quiet down at the pier after the weird start to the day. On my drive, I saw the ancient rock wall along Queen K highway with spots where the once-intricate stone network was now toppled into random mounds and seemed to whisper that all rooms are ruins. Washes of rubble and large boulders sat on the shoulder of the road like morse-code in longs and shorts. The roadway had the eerie quiet of a scolded classroom. Most shops remained closed (Wal-Mart opened at 5:30 this evening).

The ocean was weird, too. The waves were slappy and random. Even now, in the dark, the usual ebb and flow of wave noise is replaced by a constant shooshing like a windstorm in aspen. It was as if the ocean were angry with the island for suddenly being wishy-washy after all this time of being the solid one that the sea could cling to without worry of the land’s moving. Very few triathletes were training in the water today. It was difficult to swim. Bobbing in the meringue of water was stimulating. As I stepped back up to the pier, I saw a small handwritten note taped to a bike post which said “beach closed today until clear from tsunami risk.” Oh.

At home, our teacup collection is entirely intact. Plastic mugs are shattered. The damage was very random. Our glass cake plate on the fridge was in place. One of six halogen track lights was dislodged and shattered. Some paintings were still up, some down. All of the books in our headboard were spewed free, as were all the bath products in both showers. Pete, my brother in Waimea, had tiles come off the face of his fireplace, and my folks in Hilo had broken jars of liquid foods to clean up as well as damage to some treasured sculptures. I haven’t yet heard of anyone who was hurt.