- TV Coverage in Portland
At this moment, at 8:00 in the morning on March 11, Nyel and I are in Portland watching all the earthquake and tsunami news on our motel room television. We’ve been here since yesterday evening. Not that we had any prescient pre-knowledge of the evacuation advisory on the beach, of course.
It just happened that Nyel had a doctor’s appointment in Vancouver late yesterday afternoon and we decided what the heck – let’s have a ‘sleepover’ and do some fun stuff while we are at it. Little did we know that our get-away would morph into watching a tsunami ‘event’ along the coast from the safe haven of a distant motel room. Not fun at all, but captivating, none-the-less.
As usual, our peninsula is seldom mentioned on TV, although there was mention that Ocean Beach School District was closed. We were way ahead on that bit of news thanks to Facebook and email. We had also remotely checked our phone messages and were touched and gratified by all the concerned calls from far-away friends and invitations to ‘come on over’ from neighbors on higher ground. It’s interesting to feel both connected and disconnected at the same time. But when you live in Oysterville, that’s not an unusual story.
Overall, we hope that everyone along our coast is safe. We are also full of curiosity as to what our peninsula friends chose to do – did they evacuate or stay put? We’re happy that we didn’t have to make that choice.
We stayed put here on the Bay in Nahcotta. The reverse 911 call worked well. I’ve been watching Facebook, news reports etc… But felt safe enough to pack the car Then wait and see. It has been quiet and the ducks and herons are all very calm.
You are definitely a couple after our own hearts! I think we would have stayed home, too. How does the reverse 911 call work? Would it have left a message if there was no answer? We are just home and had calls and emails from all over the U.S. and from Great Britain, as well. We feel well loved!
How sad! you didn’t have a chance to visit Chief Nacotti. We had a small party with eight guests for breakfast and card later.
You can see the posts I made last night starting at about 1 AM. Click on the “Older” tab to get to the first one.
The biggest surprises were that there was no siren alert and that the Pacific County Sheriff had a robo-call advising residents to get to higher ground.
Drive safely coming back, it’s a clamming weekend and you know what happens to traffic during those times!
Let us know how things are in Oysterville. We’ve been thinking about you, and glad to hear you are ok.
Bless you for thinking of us, Andrew! We have just returned from Portland where we spent a couple of days, thus missing all of the excitement here on the peninsula. Everything is dry and “as usual” here. Even our chickens seem worry-free! But we sure appreciate all the messages from everyone. We feel well “looked after.” Hugs all around!
I suppose that the warning system needs to error on the side of caustion. I’m not sure they have a way of predicting what a tsunami will do. I listened to it on our answering machine when I got to Ilwaco and I suppose that I might have left if I’d been here to get the message. My 89 year old mother seemed unconcerned. She believed that being on the second floor of Surfpines was going to save her and she has her tsunami bag with a bottle of bourbon…for what I’m not sure.