samnavy

iTrader: (7)

The internal conversation surrounding my new reality of living on the remote side of a remote island smack-dab-middle in the Ring of Fire that has a periodic history of destructive typhoons... WHERE I LIVE AT SEA LEVEL... has been profound.

I understand that many many many millions of people over many thousands of years have lived under these same conditions and never worried... but those people didn't have instant text-message capability telling them exactly when it was coming with a countdown timer, probability of death counter, displaced cat counter, and other counters that detail to several decimal points how long you have to live.

I'm currently reassessing every aspect of my personal preparedness (which surprisingly this time has nothing to do with how much ammo I have) to deal specifically with stuff relevant to the most likely scenario of a hurricane crushing the entire side of the island I live on (see Iniki '92), or a tsunami where I have somewhere between 5 mins and 4 hours to get to the hills.

Anyways... having lived in New Orleans recently and having people talk to me about Katrina like it was yesterday... and watching the hurricanes in Texas and Florida (and the practical whole of the Caribbean)... I'm grateful for my recent training in Emergency Management. It allowed me to see the problem from the other side of the coin.

If you've got the time or interest (trust me, you do), and want to be a part of the solution, you can do some independent study. Apply for a FEMA Student ID, and take any online courses (there are several hundred courses) you feel interested in. Definitely something to add to a resume... and apparently you can get college credits for some of it. Granted, I had a team come teach a ton of practical stuff and run us through exercises, but for the prerequisite self-study, I did 6 courses in my spare time over 2 days. Knowledge is power.

Get a Student ID:
https://cdp.dhs.gov/femasid/register

Course list:
https://training.fema.gov/is/crslist.aspx?page=1

Chiburbian

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the reinforcement. I did the NIMS 100, 200, and 700 courses online a couple years back but I can't find my certificates. I think I will do it again just to refresh myself.

Braineack

iTrader: (62)

people love fema, until fema comes to help and the invetabile fail of a govt agency is exposed to people in need. then it's bush's/trump's fault FEMA sucks.

hornetball

iTrader: (4)

I'm actually amazed at how little risk there is in Hawaii. Look at the actuarials, they don't lie. I remember vacationing on the Big Island at the height of tropical storm season with a major Hurricane bearing down (they are still called Hurricanes in Hawaii . . . need to cross the dateline to be called Typhoons). Having lived in places like the outer-banks, Florida, Louisiana, Texas coast and the Phillipines, we took it seriously. Off we went to Costco for bottled water, flashlights, batteries, etc. Plenty of everything and nobody was worried . . . "Don't worry, Pele protects us, the storms always turn." We bought the stuff anyway with people laughing at us.

We kept watching the storm approach as it strengthened to a Cat. 4. Pretty soon the tides started becoming quite remarkable and the ocean roughened. Here it comes . . . .

Then, amazingly, the storm just turned. And, once clear of the islands, resumed its path. I've never seen anything like it.

It would seem that a sudden land mass that juts up to 14000' in the middle of the world's most vast ocean has a dramatic effect. Far fewer storm actually hit the Hawaiian Islands than one should reasonably expect. Pele, indeed, protects them. This characteristic must make emergency management for Hawaii that much harder -- people are accustomed to crying wolf and don't prepare.

We returned the stuff to Costco. I also found some fantastic shells that the high tides brought in.

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

I suppose the math is there to show you that, which is comforting until one hits. My emergency preparedness in Virginia did not center around hurricanes because Hampton Roads will be just fine up to a mid-grade Cat-2, and anything bigger than that I wouldn't be there. Here however, there's literally nowhere to run... plus, I can't leave the base because I have responsibilities. I can deal with a hurricane prep because I don't wait until "landfall is imminent" to get my **** together like most people. Then I just go with the flow.

Tsunami however... minutes to hours. Grab family and go-kits... and head uphill. The good news is that "uphill" is about a mile away assuming people are driving in an orderly fashion. The bad news is that a good Tsunami is going to wipe out the trio of bridges (and all the towns) that connect this side of the island to the rest. It's also going to do mass damage to the airfield on base and both the local shallow-water ports.

The way I'm prepping is to assume I'm going to be in a 4whl drive, with my family, and have had enough time to make a 2 minute stop at my garage to grab all our stuff. The question is "what to pack?" We're likely to be up on the side of a hill for a couple days until the water recedes. The southwest to west side of Kauai, starting in Hanapepe, is an island on an island, and everybody who lives here understands that we're kinda on our own.

The really good news is that the Hawaiian island chain is pretty big, and it's virtually impossible for a major storm to hit more than 1 island really bad. So if one hits Kauai, it will almost certainly miss Oahu, where there is a massive military machine to bring immediate help.

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

Tsunami is the real threat. 1946 and 1960 were the most recent. Pretty overdue now for one, frankly.

fooger03

iTrader: (2)

Why a "couple of days until the water recedes"?

I'd expect it to be somewhere between "a few minutes" and "an hour or two" for water to recede back into the ocean..

Still - it's probably not a bad idea to have a couple days of supplies so that when you return to the place that your home used to be, you can survive until help is able to get you out of there.

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

Because tsunamis come in waves. I need a midget with a snare drum an cymbal. They come in waves over the course of a few hours depending upon the way the earthquake itself occurred. See below how even 8 or 9 foot waves before and after the big one would devastate his 5-6 foot above sea level dwelling and any vehicles.



I watched a lot of the video from Japan's most recent big tsunami and the people seemed to think the first push of water inland was all of it but it was the precursor for the BIG one. Videos nearer the coast showed this. Ones further inland only saw the BIG one.

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

In certain areas of Japan they say the March 2011 tsunami caused water heights of 128-133 feet (estimates vary) due to the funneling effect of inlets and coves on the uneven shoreline.


This is one of my favorite videos showing the first return of the water in smaller waves followed by an even larger surprise return of huge proportions. It also illustrates how two adjacent inlets got differing heights and the water struggling to pass between them.

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

Never seen any of this footage... holy ****, motivation.
Disclosure... several times during this video, you actually see people running for their lives and getting swept away to their death.

sixshooter

iTrader: (12)

What I gathered from watching all of them I could find for several days last year (I was fascinated) was the misconception that it is just a "wave" like we are used to seeing at the beach but larger. It isn't a curl with a back side like a traditional break. It is the whole ocean suddenly rising and pushing and pushing and pushing inland until it reaches its level. It just doesn't stop like one wave break on the shore does. That was a misconception I had. And it isn't just water but buildings and debris being carried and pushed through other buildings. There's no way not to be crushed once you are in it. And the devastation is only compounded when it just as suddenly recedes and drags all of the debris and buildings back the other direction. I'm fascinated by its power.

hornetball

iTrader: (4)

Dang . . . puts things in perspective.

Gee Emm

Yes, and the dynamics of the incoming 'tide' when you have a bay which narrows as you move away from the coast make it even more scary - all that water, with such massive momentum, means that a 10m wave front at the coast might be 15 or 20m (maybe more?) inundation level further up the bay before the energy is spent. Add to that the reflected wave fronts as they 'bounce' off the sides - stuff of nightmares.

The Aceh tsunami killed something like a quarter of a million people in 2004 IIRC, some graphic video from that one too, including people just standing on the beach watching it come in, not realising what it was, until too late.

Stay safe Sam.

samnavy

iTrader: (7)

Yeah man... not that I'm paranoid or anything, but I have spent some time memorizing the tracks through the various fields between the base and the hills... if the hwy road is jammed on the main evac route, and I see the damned wave coming, I'll get to see just how good my 6000lb Sequoia is through the famous red dirt. I have no reservations that my house, that is on the beach, will be obliterated.