We arrived in Waikiki on October 12, which was Amy's birthday. Carina was accompanied by three of her furry friends. I conducted a pre-conference tutorial the next day for E-learn 2006. It was providential that I did it before the quake.

A 6.7 magnitude earthquake shook our hotel at 7:07 am on October 15. The earthquake struck 150 miles each of Waikiki (a little west of Kona on the Big Island).  Prior to the quake, we abandoned our morning walk because of some light rain. Amy and Carina were looking at some merchandise in the crystal shop. I was standing on the concrete stage in front of Sheraton Waikiki taking some shots of the beach. Suddenly a few of us on the concrete stage felt some great shaking and rattling. I felt shaken by a hurricane but without any wind. Immediately, the crystal shop storekeeper came out and told us to go to higher floors as he feared there might be a tsunami. We entered one of the twelve elevators but fortunately the power went out just before the door was closed. As we were going up by stairs to our hotel room, many were coming down from higher floors. They were told to go back up.  From our hotel room, we were watching for a possible tsunami. We saw some choppy waters but nothing else. An hour later, the hotel pa system notified there was no tsunami.

The earthquake left the whole island of Oahu without power for 14 hours. It was rather strange that the power company could not bring it back within hours. Later on we read in next day's newspaper that the legislature was going to investigate the long outage. As there was no food in the hotel, we went out to find food. We saw long lines in front of stores like the ABC. Finally we stopped at the Food Lion and lined up. When it came to our turn, the back generator of the store died. We were told to go elsewhere as they couldn't ring up any more sales. We later found some sandwiches at the little army snackshop next to the Hilton.

When we returned, Sheraton was able to host the limited evening buffet spread. We stood in line for an hour before being ushered into a dim candle light table. Pretty romantic! It was the best meal of the day. After the dinner, we saw quite a line waiting for the single elevator (powered by the hotel backup generator).  The power came back right after 9 pm, to everyone's great relief. We were able to sleep in peace knowing that we have some nightlight going for us.

We bought the Earthquake T-Shirt to help us remember the experience.