Quake shakes vacation

MAT-SU — As an 8.9-magnitude earthquake rocked Japan Thursday, the Owens family of Palmer touched down in Honolulu for a 10-day Hawaiian vacation.

Landing at about 8 p.m., the family of eight picked up their rental car and drove to their rented ocean-side house in Waianae, still unaware of what was going on in Asia.

“Somebody kicked on the TV and it said there was a tsunami heading our way,” Ben Owen said Monday by phone from Hawaii. “It wasn’t a warning about you might want to leave, it was ‘leave immediately.’”

He said newscasts warned that his family could be camping out for as much as a week. So they filled up some large kitchen pots — the only vessels readily available — with water.

“We grabbed some matches and stripped all the bedding off the beds and headed for high country,” Owens said.

They also grabbed a few kitchen knives.

“The boys thought they were going to go up into the mountains and kill a pig if they had to,” Owens joked.

Moving to higher ground entailed driving up a winding road until it ended and camping there. One of the bags grabbed in haste happened to contain a tent. So, some of the Owen’s family slept in that and some in the car.

By all accounts, the wave that hit Hawaii caused minor damage, at least as compared to the quake and tsunami damage in Japan. The wave in question was around seven feet tall. The hardest hit Hawaiian islands saw a few homes damaged or destroyed and a handful of flooded hotel lobbies.

The Owenses weren’t the only ones to flee the rising waters. Reports from Hawaii include tales of locals and visitors alike moving to higher ground or upper hotel floors.

Owens said a group of locals camping nearby quickly figured out his family’s situation and stopped by with a couple plates of cheesecake. It was a nice gesture, he said,

“The Owens family from Alaska will ever be grateful for the generosity and aloha spirit of the Hawaiians,” he wrote in a short letter detailing his experiences.

His letter is tongue-in-cheek, describing the night out camping in mock-harrowing terms. But, like most Alaskans, he and his family weren’t strangers to a night of camping.

Speaking Monday, Owens said the family vacation got back on track relatively quickly after that night in the wilderness.

“It’s beautiful right now. Everything’s wonderful and great,” he said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.