The first warning a tsunami was headed to Hawaii came late March 10, 2011.
A 9.0-magnitude earthquake had shaken Japan, triggering a devastating tsunami there. The waves leveled coastal cities and towns, and killed thousands.
Hawaii State Civil Defense officials issued the warning, predicting the first wave would hit the state at 3 a.m. By 5 a.m. March 11, residents began to breathe a sigh of relief, as the warned-of ocean surges had yet to materialize. But within the hour, wave levels began rising, washing quietly up and over seawalls and into some coastal homes.
Evidence of last year’s disaster is still visible in West Hawaii, the state’s hardest-hit region.
The fascia of the seawall that runs from Kailua Pier along Alii Drive for several hundred yards is in places still missing. A house still rests on blocks farther south on the coastal road.
But most of the repairs are already completed. On Alii Drive’s northern end, where water came up under the sidewalk and road, hydraulically lifting chunks of pavement up to 20 feet long, the road is smooth. The sidewalk was back in place by September. Emergency repairs remain in place on Kailua Pier, with the application process now under way for permanent repair work.
Another clean up at Keauhou Bay was scheduled for this weekend, while work at Honokohau Harbor has already been finished.
“For the small business on Alii Drive, for homes at Napoopoo, displaced workers at Kona Village, it was personally devastating,” Mayor Billy Kenoi said.
Collectively, however, the damage was fairly minimal, he added. The county’s total bill for tsunami repairs came to about $800,000. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will reimburse up to 75 percent of eligible costs, about $475,000. Thus far, Kenoi said, FEMA has paid the county about $317,000.
“We have been extremely fortunate,” Kenoi said. “Every experience is a lesson learned. We recognize we’re not always going to be so fortunate.”
One of the uncompleted repair projects is fixing the foundation of the Alii Drive seawall. Because the project will include work on the makai side of the wall, the project is under the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ jurisdiction. A spokesman said Friday the corps had “no ongoing regulatory actions” regarding the seawall.
Public Works Director Warren Lee said his last conversation with the corps was about six months ago.
“They thought they would have done something by late last year if things go perfectly,” Lee said. “Things don’t go perfectly.”
Lee said he wasn’t worried about voids in the foundations allowing water to undermine the sidewalk.
“We have that sidewalk thick enough, so it shouldn’t lift,” he said. “I’ve been watching it.”
The other main repair to be completed, the Kailua Pier foundation, will also need corps approval, Department of Land and Natural Resources engineer Eric Yuasa said. FEMA funding for the pier is anticipated to be about $1.4 million. DLNR officials had the pier inspected by a structural engineer and reopened it about 10 days after the tsunami.
FEMA reimbursement for Keauhou Boat Ramp repairs were estimated at about $550,000, and the state expected to receive about $12,000 for repairs at Honokohau Harbor.
Kenoi and other county officials, including Police Chief Harry Kubojiri and Civil Defense Administrative Officer John Drummond, all said they hope county residents do not become complacent because of the relatively minor impact the tsunami had along the majority of the island’s coast.
Educating the public about the dangers of natural disasters — especially after the Big Island’s recent string of near misses with tsunamis and hurricanes — remains important, Kubojiri said.
“We had some complaints, evidently (people in) some condominiums and homes, they felt they didn’t need to be evacuated,” he said. “In years past, whether it be hurricane or tsunami, whatever natural disasters come or are anticipated to come, we’ve been very fortunate.”
The police conducted an after-action survey about a week after the tsunami, Kubojiri said.
“Overall, there were some small areas we could improve in, as far as police handling evacuation,” he said.
The main thing officers noticed, he said, was the congestion caused by people who were outside of the evacuation zone when the evacuation warning was issued, and who tried to re-enter the zone to retrieve personal belongings before the waves began hitting.
“That created some of the traffic jams,” Kubojiri said. “We have to do a little better job to inform people they cannot go back in.”
The Emergency Operations Center in Kona had some technical problems during the event, making it at times difficult for people working in West Hawaii to communicate with the main Emergency Operations Center in Hilo. That prompted the department to change its protocol to require an information technology specialist at both sites in future emergencies, the police chief said.