Whitianga and the Tsunami

Kia Ora!

Date: 28 February 2010. We drove to the east shore of the Coromandel Peninsula on Saturday and stayed in a motel in Whitianga, a tourist destination for its beaches and mountains.

Sunday morning at 7:35 AM, there was an unexpected loud knock at the door. By good fortune, I happened to be dressed and making a spot of morning tea. Our motel manager was at the door, looking quite serious.

"Turn your TV on to Channel 1," he said, "there's been a large earthquake in Peru and we are on a tsunami alert! The tsunami is scheduled to get here about 10:00AM. If you hear the town sirens go off, get in your car and head into the mountains."

We sipped our tea while calmly organizing our things with an ear to the TV broadcasting updates every 30 minutes. The water was rising in a report from the Chatham Islands. New Zealanders were warned to stay off the beaches. Fishing fleets did not go out, though some vessels deliberately left for sea where they can safely ride out a tsunami.

We decided to move everything to the car now so we could leave quickly if necessary. We had a good two hours of grace. The morning was sunny, warm, and quiet - a contrast to the chaos that had erupted an ocean away. We walked two blocks up the main street to find a place open for breakfast and leisurely ate. We returned to the motel about 9:30 AM and decided it was time to leave this beautiful town perched on the edge of the ocean at sea level. We headed up into high ground toward the west coast of the peninsula, the coast away from the Pacific Ocean.

The excellent road wound in hairpins and esses through the mountains. At one point, we stopped at a lookout and gazed toward Peru with a prayer in our hearts for the suffering there and wondered what was going to happen to the coast in New Zealand and the surrounding South Pacific Islands.

Later I heard that indeed the siren sounded in Whitianga as the tsunami rose about one meter, not really threatening anything yet. The alert continued throughout the day since a tsunami can grow larger beyond the first wall of water. The highest level reached in some places of New Zealand was 3 meters. Fortunately it did not reach damaging proportions.

We drove back on the coastal road along the west side of Coromandel Peninsula, close to the shore. The water didn't seem high and we were never in danger.

Cheers,
Kiwi Traveler