“Whales live underwater. We won’t see anything.” It had taken Harold and Gina six hours to get from Sacramento to Honolulu, then another three hours on the one weekly flight that traveled the thirteen hundred miles due south to Christmas Island. He didn’t come all that way to watch a bump in the ocean. Harold looked up at the azure sky.
“At least it’s not raining,” he said. Just as they had set sail, they had heard a huge boom, like a gigantic thunderclap. But there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky, so the cruise left as scheduled.
“Have a drink,” Gina said. “Get comfortable like everyone else.”
Harold put his hand on her shoulder and stood up, looking back toward Christmas Island.
“What’s the matter?” Gina said.
“I don’t know. Something’s going on with the birds.”
The island was small and sparsely populated, its 3,200 residents surviving primarily as subsistence farmers and on whatever tourist dollars they could bring in. But it was so expensive and inconvenient that few tourists— mostly Americans like Harold and Gina—vacationed there. The island, an expanse of crushed coral sand only twelve feet above sea level at its highest point, provided a home for hundreds of bird species and colorful underwater life.
Because Harold was an avid hunter as well as a fisherman, the birds had caught his attention. It seemed like every bird on the island, thousands of them, had suddenly taken flight.
“What do you make of that?” Harold said to no one in particular.
By this time everyone on board was looking at the island, including the dive master and captain. Both of them were Americans who had moved to Christmas Island to start their small dive business. Captain Pete and Dive Master Dave, they called themselves, which Harold had thought a bit corny. Pete cut the motor to a crawl.
“Hey, Pete,” Dave said, “you see any smoke?”
“Nope,” Pete said. “Looks like they got spooked by something, though.”
“What about an earthquake?” Harold said. He knew from his lifetime in California that dogs and other animals could detect natural disasters before people could.
“Nope,” Pete said again. “This isn’t an earthquake zone. No volcanoes, either.”
Harold pulled out the binoculars he kept in his bag.
“We better radio in and see what’s going on,” Dave said.
As Pete called in to the shop, Harold got a closer look at the island. From this distance, even with the binoculars, the birds looked like a swarm of bees circling the island. But something else grabbed his attention.
“That’s weird,” he said.
“What?” said Gina.
“The beach is getting bigger.”
“What do you mean the beach is getting bigger?” Gina said, her voice rising in volume. Dave must have heard her.
“What about the beach?” Dave said to Harold.
Harold described what he could see. The beach, which had extended about a hundred yards from the ocean to the trees only a minute before, was growing by what seemed like the same amount every few seconds. After another moment he could see exposed reef around the entire island. Several beachgoers ran down to the newly uncovered sand, while others simply stood and watched.
“Oh, no!” said Dave. He ran over to Pete, who had just reached the dive base on the radio and asked what was happening there. Before they could reply, Dave yanked the transmitter out of Pete’s hand.
“Get the boat as far away from the island as fast as you can! Right now!” he yelled at Pete. Confused and not used to taking orders on his own boat, Pete nevertheless saw the alarm in Dave’s eyes and told everyone to hang on. He gunned the engine until they were doing twenty knots.
Dave clicked on the transmitter. “Base, this is
A woman on the other end answered. Harold remembered her as Tasha, the girl who had checked them in for the dive. Before they’d left on the trip, Dave and Tasha’s canoodling in the shop had been practically pornographic.
“I read you,
“Tasha, that’s not the tide! A tsunami is coming! Get out of there!”
“Oh my God! What should I do?”
“Get to the highest point you can.”
“What about you?”
“We’re okay. We’re in deep water. Tsunamis only get big in shallow water.”
Tasha’s panicked voice came back. “But there’s nowhere to go!”
Harold knew she was right. Not only was the highest point on the island only twelve feet above sea level, there was only a smattering of two-story buildings on the island, and none near the dive shop.
“Then climb a tree!”
“It’s too late!” Harold said and pointed.
Gina screamed. “Look!”
Even faster than it had rushed out, the water began pouring back toward the beach. The small figures Harold could see with the binoculars ran back toward the island. Some of them were caught by the incoming wave even before they reached the trees.
But the image between him and the island grew more terrifying. The water rose until it completely obscured even the tallest tree. Harold realized it would be only seconds before the mammoth wave covered the island.
A hiss of static issued from the radio. Tasha was gone.
Harold, wide-eyed, could only shake his head and mutter to himself.
“I guess we should have gone to Hawaii.”
EIGHT
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was tiny, so the walking portion of the Japanese school tour went quickly. Kai took them into the conference room where the children could sit. The sixth graders had been listening quietly, the teacher translating while Kai spoke. Kai knew the Japanese language of his father’s ancestry about as well as he knew the Italian language of his mother’s, which meant that he could order sushi or rigatoni and that was about it. Japan had always been particularly susceptible to tsunamis, and the videos from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand showing the tsunami carrying away people, buildings, and cars had only added to the students’ curiosity. Kai capitalized on their interest by telling stories about tsunamis that had hit Hawaii in the past.
“Do you remember me telling you about the tsunami that struck Hilo in 1946?” he said.
A couple of kids nodded. Kai always started the tour off by telling them how the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center was founded. On April 1, 1946, an earthquake measuring 8.1 on the Richter scale was generated in the Aleutian Islands. No one in Hawaii knew that it had happened, except for a few seismologists. Five hours later, the first of a series of waves hit the northern shore of the Big Island. Hilo, on the northeast side of the island, was the only large city facing that direction. Even when people got word that a tsunami had struck, many thought it was an April Fool’s Day prank. But it wasn’t a joke. More than 150 Hawaiians perished that day.
Kai went on with the story: “One of the common misconceptions about tsunamis is that they consist of one huge wave. In fact, tsunamis typically come in a series of waves created by the earthquake-displaced water rebounding up and down, with the third or fourth wave in the series usually the biggest. The waves alternate with troughs that are just as low as the waves are high, which is why the water recedes from the beach before every wave. The energy of each wave extends to the bottom of the ocean, accounting for the long periods between waves. Because people aren’t aware of these tsunami behaviors, they often put themselves in unnecessary danger.
