Tsunami...!

Well, I’m sitting here above Kawau Bay, awaiting the tsunami. Still waiting... Turned on the radio as usual at breakfast, and behold, the interesting Sunday morning programmes had been abandoned for what they keep calling a Radio One News Special.

The “massive” earthquake off the coast of Chile has generated a “massive” tsunami, which is “racing” across the Pacific in our direction at “the speed of a jet aircraft”. There are vague reports from the Marquesas, as though they are farewelling the world and gurgling in an unseemly manner as they sink. Then it seems the Chathams are getting a series of waves, but they don’t seem too big to me. It’s about now I learn something new, about “negative” waves – that’s when the bay empties before a big one comes in.

Ah yes, I remember that. Old Ron Connolly from Fiji once told of standing on the wharf in Suva when the whole lagoon suddenly emptied. Fish were flapping on the seabed. He was a silly twit to keep standing there – but being Ron, he survived.
There’s a long reef jutting out from the south end of Algies Bay, and I figure that it will be my marker. If a negative wave happens I will see the whole reef. It hasn’t happened yet.

Radio One News Special is grinding on, interviewing mayors, a variety of Sunday morning activists and blearily on-duty civil defence type persons, and copious vox populi. There is a certain amount of bureaucratic indignation about Members of the Public who presume to defy orders not to venture on to the beaches. How could they...? The worst offenders, it seems, are dog owners. That figures.

At 1045 hrs Kawau Bay does seem to be shallower. The reef is more visible than I would have expected. Maybe some of the boats at their moorings will be aground soon. Up north at Tutukaka, I hear, the boaties have put to sea thinking that’s safer. It sounds like a cast-iron excuse for a day’s fishing, to me.

Many years ago when I was a journalist on the Auckland Star there was a standard journalists’ joke about boring headlines. One such was Small Earthquake in Chile – Not Many Hurt. Well, this one was a big one. We have yet to hear about casualties. Organisations such as Red Cross and Medicins Sans Frontieres will be stretched to the limit. It tends to give perspective to the NZ obsession this morning with the safety of people on our beaches.

At 1400 hrs all is well in Kawau Bay. The south-end reef is more exposed than I have ever seen it. Everyone seems to be coping. Nothing has come roaring in from the Pacific.