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Tsunami Warning. Evacuation. Oh My.
Last Thursday (December 5, 2024), my coworker Susan and I were in a town thirty minutes away from our office, shopping for baby items to give to one of our resource parents (foster parents) who will be taking care of an infant that’s currently in our care. We work in human services for the state, and we’re located on the coast. As we were headed into the store, our phone went off, alerting us of an earthquake. We thought that was weird because we didn’t feel anything and proceeded to go inside the store. A while later our phone and everyone else’s shrilled. It was a bit ominous, tbh.
My first thought: WTF!?
We looked at our work phone.
A tsunami warning???
The town was ordered to evacuate and move to higher
ground. 😮
The Pacific Ocean is a couple of blocks from our office and everyone there was told to leave NOW!
Again, WTF!?
My manager contacted me and told me to be safe and to
get to higher ground. Susan’s manager told her the same and that when we left
the town we were in, we needed to take a different route – a higher one.
We called our family to make sure they were okay, which they were.
So, what did Susan and I do?
We continued our business as normal, then took a
break and got a Dutch Bro’s coffee. I mean, hey if we were going to die, we were going to die caffeinated and happy. 🙃
And obviously, where we were, not everyone was
panicking because they were still working and others were going about their day
as if nothing was happening.
Maybe because the town we were in was not
in the danger zone whereas the town I worked and lived in was. Hell, sometimes I
can hear the ocean from inside my house because currently, we live five blocks
away from it.
The experience was a trip though, and thankfully, my life partner
and I do have a bugout plan if faced with a major catastrophe.
But anyway, after an hour or so, the evacuation was
called off and life resumed as normal with the added frazzled nerves that some
people had from the experience.
It was a crazy day, and I’m so grateful for Susan being with me through the whole ordeal, for her being her amazing self, for my other awesome coworkers, and for my wonderful job.
I have to say, even though there is a possibility of a
major tsunami where I am, I will take my chances with that because it’s
worth being here. 🥰
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