SALT LAKE CITY — Hawaii’s tsunami advisory has been lifted after people on the island watched and waited for the past 24 hours. Those on Oahu were evacuated ahead of the first expected wave.
Tuesday evening, sirens were heard across Oahu with alerts calling for people to get to higher ground. For two Utah families and hundreds more, that place was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ Laie temple.
Utah residents Kambri and Harrison Vaughn had just arrived in Hawaii for a family trip. Their Airbnb was along the coast, when a neighbor came to check on them.
“She’s got warnings about tsunamis, but this was the first time that felt like something actually was going to happen,” Vaughn said.
The couple evacuated to a place called Temple Hill, right above Laie Temple, with others from the community.
“Everybody was family … and were sharing food and goodies, and stuff like that,” William Steel, another Utah resident in Oahu at this time, said. “There was no panic at all, everybody just seemed like it was, sort of, a large party.
Seismologist Emily Morton with the University of Utah Seismograph Station said the tsunami stemmed from an 8.8-magnitude earthquake that hit off the coast of Russia and its aftershocks.
“The Pacific oceanic plate is going beneath the continental plate that Russia is on,” Morton said. “So, this is where we see the biggest earthquakes.”
Morton said they projected waves hitting Hawaii to be smaller, but powerful and reoccurring.
“It actually is pulsing for hours,” Morton said.
And so, those on the island waited hours on Temple Hill. Missionaries with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints started singing around 9 p.m.
“It just brought a lot of peace to see all the missionaries up there with their faith and just singing, and it was just really powerful actually,” Kambri said.
Both Utah families emphasized how good the communication and alert system was. They received updates every hour and knew exactly what to do. They both said they are grateful for the safety they felt.
Contributing: Devin Oldroyd
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