Friday night Kolt had got off work early, (he is still on nights) which I was super excited about. I had just gone to the grocery store and was craving chicken tacos, but I don't know how to turn on our grill (someone broke the starter). Soooo..... Kolt coming home early (it was around 6 pm) was awesome because he could grill the chicken for our tacos. (It's the simple things in life that get me so excited.) Usually, he doesn't get off work until about midnight and is home by 12:15 am. So this night we were able to sit down and enjoy a delicious dinner together before relaxing for the evening. Kolt had plans to go hunting the next morning so he went to bed early, probably around 10 pm. I stayed downstairs with the baby and played on the computer while she slept in her swing.
Kolt woke up a little before midnight and came downstairs to get a drink and go to the bathroom, which he would normally do upstairs. A few minutes later the house started shaking from side to side. As I jumped off the couch, Kolt ran out of the bathroom, completely naked with his underwear in one hand and covering himself with his other hand. I looked at him and cried out "what the F*ck is that?" His eyes got big as he yelled "earthquake. get outside." I ran to the baby's swing and while trying to keep my balance snatched her up, of course waking her in the process. Once I had a death grip on the baby with both arms I ran to the front door as Kolt was still screaming to get outside....... he was still naked. I got in the door way that leads from the mudroom into the front hallway and stared at him, he was on the front porch now...... still naked. I was fine in this doorway since I knew it was probably the sturdiest in the house. This door used to be the front door to the house before they added on the mudroom sometime in the last few years. I was also skeptical about going outside during an earthquake. Kolt on the other hand, runs for dear life to the nearest exit because he refuses to be inside a building for fear of it collapsing. (He experienced several while stationed in San Diego. Each one had him sprinting to the nearest door in sight) Anyways, back to the naked one........ as he is yelling to get outside, I started yelling for him to put his damn underwear on. He looked at his hand holding the underwear like he had completely forgotten that he was naked. The shaking had stopped. I'm still frozen in the doorway, feet spread to keep my balance, baby secured in both of my arms, as Kolt came back in the mudroom to put on his underwear. Then we ventured outside, for what I'm not sure. The neighbor two doors down in our building was outside with his lab so Gunner went and ran around with her while Kolt and the neighbor exchanged a few sentences about the quake and then we went back inside. Now the baby is awake, Kolt is trying to calm down, I'm shaking out of fear, and Gunner has no idea what all the ruckus is about. So I did what any normal Sitkan would do after an earthquake...... updated my facebook status to inform the world, or at least all of my friends, of the huge tremor we just felt. The computer was already open, turned on, and logged onto facebook anyways. Five of my friends had already beat me to it so don't judge me. I decide to change Brinleigh's diaper when my next door neighbor, Meghan, texts me. She says her husband, Nick, wants to get off Japonski. (Remember, Japonski is our tiny island that only really consists of the airport, Coast Guard base, Coast Guard housing, Coast Guard Cutter Maple boat station, the college and the boarding school.) I told Kolt that Nick wanted to at least get off Japonski and he agreed, we should too. At least if we were in town on Baranoff Island (the main island), we would be safer if there was a Tsunami warning. Then the emergency message came on the tv notifying us of the earthquake and possible tsunami warning. Kolt went upstairs to get dressed while I checked the facebook notifications I had, one of which was from Kolt's friend telling me the earthquake was a 7.7 and another from a different friend asking if Kolt was awake. Of course his phone is going nuts as I ran upstairs to tell him how big the earthquake was. He was on the phone telling a friend that we were going to get off Japonski for a while, just in case. As soon as he hung up the phone we heard sirens, which I initially thought was an ambulance. We locked eyes and realized it was the tsunami alarms going off.
In a panic stricken state, we ran downstairs, I remember grabbing the diaper bag and my jacket, threw some slippers on my feet and ran out the front door with Brinleigh in my arms. I was standing on the front porch as Kolt ran back and forth from the house to the truck to the shed to the truck to the house. I was frozen, I didn't know what to do. I heard the tsunami alarms going off, Kolt screaming at me to get in the truck, I'm seeing ALL of our neighbors running in and out of their houses loading their vehicles up and other neighbors who were already leaving housing. With all of the chaos I couldn't think straight, I couldn't think about what I NEEDED to grab. I tried getting Gunner outside and he would not come out of the house, which is abnormal for him, he usually beats us out the front door. I cried out to Kolt that Gunner wouldn't come outside, he yelled at me to get in the truck and that he would get Gunner. Then I started crying "but I don't have a car seat"......."GET IN THE TRUCK," Kolt yelled yet again. So I ran back in the house, grabbed the car seat, and ran to the truck. Kolt was putting the car seat base in the truck, thankfully at light speed since he had done it so many times. (We didn't get a 2nd car seat base until we went home for Christmas so for the last 4 months we have been switching the base out between the two vehicles.) He grabbed the car seat from me, slammed it into the base and I strapped Brinleigh in so fast that I barely remember even doing it. I climbed into the front seat of the truck and watched our neighbors still running around loading vehicles as I waited for Kolt. He got Gunner into the back, jumped in the drivers seat and took off, speeding through housing. As we drove towards town and over the bridge I was shaking. I tried to think about what I needed to do, who should I call, nobody can help us, its after 2am in Arizona, nobody will be awake. As we followed a line of cars to the evacuation route, I started dialing........ First Kolt's mom. I didn't think she slept with her cell phone near her so I called the house phone. No answer. Then I called her cell phone. No answer. So I decided to call my mom..... I knew she rarely answered the house phone so I called her cell phone. No answer. So then I tried her house phone. No answer. I just needed to let someone... anyone.... in our family know what was going on and where we were going to be just in case the worst case scenario happened. I called my sister, Mandy. She was sleeping but she answered. I told her what was going on and hung up. Next, I called Kolt's dad, and surprisingly he answered as well. I told him the situation and hung up with him. Now what? I had told at least one person from each of our families and knew that if need be, they would spread the word. As we headed down one of the main roads in our town we followed other cars to the evacuation route. As soon as we turned down the side street which took us up a slight incline I knew we were close to the high school, our tsunami evacuation site. As we rounded a corner we came to a complete stop. There was a line of cars all the way down the road leading up to the school. We knew how big that school parking lot was and if it wasn't already full it was definitely going to be by the time we got there. An ambulance was leaving the school and turned down another side street. I yelled at Kolt to follow that ambulance. He swerved into the other lane of traffic (there were no other cars coming after the ambulance) and followed the ambulance down the side street. We were headed to the next school a couple minutes away. As Kolt drove I kept up with the phone calls and text messages that were coming in on both phones. Friends asking where we were at, where were we going, letting us know where they were at or where they were going. We pulled into the elementary school parking lot and there were still quite a few empty parking spaces. There was an ambulance in the parking lot with lights on and everyone was heading inside the school. We waited for our friends, Cooper and Kate, to arrive and once they did we all decided to head inside. We didn't know at the time that we were allowed to bring the dogs in so we had left them all in the trucks. All I had was the baby in her car seat, still wide awake, and the diaper bag. Kolt had grabbed a rubbermaid tote full of blankets and a box of MRE's from the shed but we left them in the truck for the time being. We went inside the school and found a spot to hang out until further notice.
There were a lot of firemen walking around, answering questions, giving out what little information they had. The earthquake had hit 90 miles north of us and was downgraded to a 7.5 due to the depth it had occurred at. After a couple hours we were informed that the tsunami warning had been downgraded to an advisory. A tsunami warning means that an area is likely to be hit by a wave,
while an advisory means that there may be strong currents but that
widespread inundation is not expected. People flooded out of the doors of the school and into their vehicles. We were stuck in traffic trying to get home for close to thirty minutes.
When we got home I was terrified to go upstairs. It was around 3am and we had not felt an aftershock yet so I insisted on sleeping downstairs. Even though Kolt hates sleeping on the couch, he camped out downstairs with Brinleigh and I. He was still planning on going hunting that morning so of course he passed out right away. I finally got Brinleigh back to sleep with me on the other couch and then kept myself awake because I was so paranoid about feeling the aftershock. I swear I felt movement a few times but convinced myself it was all in my head. Until I read the NY times article about the events the next day. The earthquake was followed by SIX aftershocks, the strongest registering at a magnitude of 5.1 and occurring about 4 hours after the initial quake. So the movements I thought were all in my head could very well have been the aftershocks.
New York Times article about Alaska earthquake/ Tsunami
I was kicking myself in the ass for not putting together our "Tsunami Evacuation List" and packing an emergency bag, which I had fully intended on doing after our minor tsunami scare in October. This time I started working on it the next day. It's still not all done, but I am determined to finish our "Bug out bin" by this weekend and I pray that we will never have to use it. It's only been a few days but I am still shaken up about the events. Last night the neighbors were stomping around the house and it made my house shake/vibrate, my heart stopped because I thought it was an earthquake. I can't go to sleep upstairs with the baby unless Kolt is with us and I make him sleep on the couch downstairs with us until I am ready to go upstairs at night. Last night I couldn't get to sleep because my anxiety was so bad about the whole situation. I'm hoping this didn't traumatize me and that the fear will subside within a couple weeks, otherwise I'm gonna have to get my Xanax refilled. In the meantime, I'm trying to keep myself busy while Kolt is at work so that I don't send myself into a panic attack when the wind picks up.
