Earthquake rocks Hawaii

[warubozu]

As many of you may know by now there was a very strong earthquake that was centered about 12 mile northwest of Kona on the Big Island beneath the ocean this morning. The first quake occured at 7:07 a.m. and measured 6.6. A second quake occured at 7:14 a.m. and measured 5.8. A third quake at 10:35 and measured 4.4. After shocks were being felt on the Big Island after the earthquakes and are still occuring. The first two earthquakes were strong enough to be felt on all islands. Most of the damaged from the quake occured on the Big Island with structural damage to several buildings, homes, and retaining walls. Numerous land slides and rock falls were also reported on the Big Island and Maui. No lost of lives with the exception of some injuries on the Big Island were reported. The first thing that came to my mind after the first quake was that I hope to god there wasn't a tsunami that was generated. Luckily it was reported by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at Ewa Beach in Honolulu that there was no tsunami that was generated.

Power outage occured on some parts of all the islands with Honolulu being in a island wide power outage. I'm at home in Honolulu this morning and have only been able to get power back on in my neighborhood about 40 minutes ago (it's now 3:35 p.m. Hawaiian standard time). Roughly 85 percent of Honlulu is still without power and power is being slowly restored to other parts of the island.

To many here earthquakes are nothing new as many feel them on a regular basis especially those who live in California. Here in Hawaii earthquakes of a 6+ magnitude don't occur often and this is the first time I have experienced one. It was a strange feeling as I was lying in bed when I heard a light rumble and a split second later I felt the first quake. My whole house was shaking with me lying in my bed. The shaking last for at least 15 to 20 seconds but felt like eternity. I also felt the second quake, however it wasn't as strong nor did it last as long as the first one.

While all is well with me as there have been no damage to my home or property, I hope Vertigo-1 is ok as he lives in Hilo on the Big Island.

 

[3DCadman]

Wow, I am glad everyone's ok, and your home is in one piece.

I haven't watched the news all day, so I had no idea this happened!

Have the aftershocks stopped completely?

 

[warubozu]

I can't feel the aftershocks here in Honolulu as they aren't as intense as the initial quakes. However the last aftershock occured about 50 minutes ago and it has been reported that it can be felt on the Big Island because of the close proximity of the center of the quakes.

 

[skyline889]

In Manoa Valley, power just came back online ten minutes ago, it's 11:40 pm right now, so we were without power for over 16 hours. The food in both our refrigerators and our stand up freezer is all skunked.

HECO has some major answering to do here. Kaua'i, Big Island, and Maui all had their power up before O'ahu. No electricity for the whole day, threat of no water too, can you imagine if this was a real disaster? The state was totally unprepared for this.

 

[Vertigo-1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by warubozu While all is well with me as there have been no damage to my home or property, I hope Vertigo-1 is ok as he lives in Hilo on the Big Island.

I'm still around, thanks for the concern!

It was definitely freaky though, as like you, it was the first time in my life feeling an earthquake of that magnitude. Hilo wasn't hit too badly all in all. I haven't heard much regarding damage to Hilo. In Kona, it seems like most of the hotels suffered structural damage, along with rock slides along the long highway route between Hilo and Kona.

I have a friend who happened to be flying back from Honolulu yesterday, he said he and many others had been stuck in the check out lobby for 10 hours straight! That must've been chaotic. He was finally able to get out of there at 7PM when he had arrived in the morning.

 

[warubozu]

Check this morning's Honolulu Advertiser or Starbulletin for the reason why Hawaiian Electric Company had to shut down power completely on the island on Oahu. It's not as if HECO wasn't prepared for an event like this. Two of the thirteen generators at three major power plants that produces electricity for Oahu were tripped offline by the island's power grid safety system when it detected a critical fault in the system. With the two generators down, the safety system began to systematically shutdown other generators that were online to shed load and prevent major damage or burnout to the remaining generators that were trying to meet the electric usage demand at that time. By 7:20 a.m. yesterday (6 minutes after the second quake) the entire island of Oahu was without power. If there were a major burnout of one or several of the remaining generators at either of the major power plants, we would be without power for days or possibly weeks.

The reason why power was so quickly restored to the neighbor islands as compared to Oahu is because the power grid system and generators there are smaller and less complex than the ones on Oahu. Each of the generators at Oahu's three major power plants had to be manually restarted one by one. This means that they start one generator, let it get back up to full power, and when that generator is deem stable enough the next generator is fired up. The process is repeated until all generators are back on line. Once the generators were restarted and deemed stable enough, HECO began to bring back power to various parts of the island one district at a time. HECO had to slowly proceed with the power restoration procedure to make sure that the power system was stable and that they don't trip the safety system and causing another shutting down of the entire power system. In which case had the power safety system trip in again, we would be back to square one with no power to the entire island.

 

[Samgotit]

Quote:

Originally Posted by skyline889 HECO has some major answering to do here. Kaua'i, Big Island, and Maui all had their power up before O'ahu. No electricity for the whole day, threat of no water too, can you imagine if this was a real disaster? The state was totally unprepared for this.

Welcome to the club.

Glad all of you are OK!

 

[warubozu]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Vertigo-1 I'm still around, thanks for the concern! It was definitely freaky though, as like you, it was the first time in my life feeling an earthquake of that magnitude. Hilo wasn't hit too badly all in all. I haven't heard much regarding damage to Hilo. In Kona, it seems like most of the hotels suffered structural damage, along with rock slides along the long highway route between Hilo and Kona. I have a friend who happened to be flying back from Honolulu yesterday, he said he and many others had been stuck in the check out lobby for 10 hours straight! That must've been chaotic. He was finally able to get out of there at 7PM when he had arrived in the morning.

Glad to hear that you're ok and still kicking. Yeah, pictures and the videos from the news definitely do show that Kona bore the brunt of the damage. Your friends and many others who were trying to leave the island had a difficult time because Honolulu International Airport was running only on back up power. They were turning people away from the airport yesterday afternoon because there was no power to operate the security scanning machings and all searches was done manually. They didn't want a massive crowd of people in terminals creating a chaotic scene trying to get to the departure terminals. Some departing flights were also cancelled. Honolulu Int'l did get full power back on until around 7 p.m. last night. As of this morning there's still small parts of Honolulu that don't have power fully restored. Luckily there was no tsunami that was generated, I can only imagine the destruction that was done by the 1946 tsunami that rolled thru Laupahoehoe.

 

[Samgotit]

Quote:

Originally Posted by skyline889 In Manoa Valley, power just came back online ten minutes ago, it's 11:40 pm right now, so we were without power for over 16 hours. The food in both our refrigerators and our stand up freezer is all skunked. HECO has some major answering to do here. Kaua'i, Big Island, and Maui all had their power up before O'ahu. No electricity for the whole day, threat of no water too, can you imagine if this was a real disaster? The state was totally unprepared for this.

This is a silly incidental, but you may ask your Dad to review his homeowner’s policy or call his agent. All of the food in both a dedicated refrigerator and a stand alone freezer was covered under my policy during the outages caused by Katrina. The amount I recovered was pretty significant.

I hope this doesn’t come off as preachy, buy relying on your utilities and state government can be a fatal flaw. Right or wrong, many people did it during Katrina and many lost their lives because of it. Again, sorry for sounding preachy.