I live in Newport, Oregon. It is a nice little city on the Central Oregon Coast. Last week, on Wednesday, in the late afternoon we got tsunami alerts coming into all our phones and emails and texts and ham radios.
We were under “TSUNAMI WATCH!”
That’s something easy to forget about around here. The constant thread of the tsunami. Honestly, I prefer the term tidal wave, but who am I to argue regarding oceanography terminology.
I don’t know WHY I easily forget about tsunamis. I’m just finishing up my next novel, EELS! Last Wednesday I was sitting here at The Sea Hag Luxury Apartments, editing the disaster/horror novel when I got the tsunami warnings.
I shook my head in disbelief. EELS! is about a megathrust quake that brings in more than just a 150 foot wave. It brings in… I’ll let you guess LOL.
Needless to say, I was right in the middle of a spectacular wave scene in the novel when we got the tsunami alert.
The Oregon Coast is always waiting for “The Big One.” The earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, followed by a massive tsunami, that wipes all of our little cities along the coast off the maps.
But the tsunami last Wednesday was for a “distant tsunami.” Not the: You have 14 minutes to get to high ground or you’ll die(!) type of tsunami.
The tsunami was caused by a huge 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Russia. Off the Kamchatka Peninsula to be exact. That’s a LONG way away from here. It must be hundreds of miles away! (it’s thousands)
So there I sat, writing about an “eel tsunami” when we got word to “watch the waters.” Don’t go on the beach!
We might all die!
But probably not!
Or maybe!
Nobody was freaking out, but an earthquake that big could theoretically cause a massive wave that comes across the Pacific from the other side of the world and… kill everybody. But nobody can say we didn’t have plenty of warning.
We decided to stay put in our apartment.
The advisory went from a tsunami WATCH to a tsunami ADVISORY in the evening. Hawaii was forecast to get a big wave and they were under a Tsunami WARNING… the worst kind of tsunami advisory..
I get a bit edgy in situations like this.Like when a meteorite is zooming by the earth and has a .000008% chance of hitting. My mind drifts to my GO BAG!! (for the tsunami, not the meteorite. Not much you can do about a dang meteorite!)
Obviously, we could’ve gotten into the car and headed for higher ground. But we already live at 200 feet above sea level, so we waited.
And waited.
And waited.
I fell asleep at 11:30. The tsunami HIT at midnight. It was apparently about a foot higher than high tide. Or something like that.
Keep an eye on the water if you’re on the Pacific Coast. You never know when the Big One is going to hit.
Like my book, EELS! I’ll have more information about the release date soon.
