I arrived at Oahu in the early evening yesterday. I’d been on the road for nearly sixteen hours. My tailbone was aching from sitting for so long. I’d drained the batteries on my iPod and two external batteries as well. I was exhausted. After a quick dinner, and a stop by the ABC store to pick up a few items I hadn’t been able to find at home or carry on the plane, I went up to my room to get ready for bed.
At 4am the hotel klaxon went off, telling me in English and Japanese that the hotel had received a threat (of an unspecified type) and that everyone should evacuate at once. I began to fumble around in the dark for my shoes (I’m not going to make it very far in an evacuation without my orthopedics) but the message was suddenly cut short. Everything was eerily quiet after the brutal assault on my ears by the klaxon. A moment later, I could hear people running down the hall.
I decided that it was probably a false alarm. If there had been a real problem, the message would have continued. I would have heard more people. There would be sirens, flashing lights, or something. But it was still. I looked out the window. The sky was clear, the moon a fingernail in the sky. It was clear like it never is back in Boston. Without even stepping outside, even in downtown Honolulu, I could see the milky way. Beautiful. Serene.
I kept my pants and shoes on, but I went back to bed, on top over comforter, in case I needed to make a run for it. I dozed off.
My dreams were broken again by the klaxon a few moments later. I don’t know whether it was a minute or twenty–I couldn’t see the clock. It seemed much louder this time. My ears hurt. Then the voice began again, reassuring me repeatedly that previous announcement had been a false alarm and there was no emergency of any kind. Everyone could return to their room at their leisure.
Since I was wide awake anyway, and it was mid-morning back home, I called my family to wish them a good morning and I told them this story. Then they had to get ready for church, so they had to get off the phone. They suggested that I go back to bed and catch up a little bit on my sleep.
I stripped off my shoes and pants and crawled back under the covers. In a few moments, I was dreaming again.
Some thought nagged at me, pulling me out of sleep just a moment before 5am. I was suddenly completely awake. Something needed my attention.
My mind drifted back to the moment many weeks ago, when this trip was being planned. We have many younger, very capable people in our group. I’ve made trips like this before, and the appeal of sitting on planes and running through airports just for the sake of doing whatever it is that I do in an exotic area code has diminished considerably over the years. And this excursion seemed particularly annoying: nobody in the team I’m meeting with is actually based in Hawaii, as far as I can tell. They’re from all over the country, but nobody is in Hawaii. But for some reason, we were all supposed to assemble there. The equipment would be there. Why the equipment couldn’t be boxed up and sent to use nobody knew or understood, but that was the case.
When the roster for the trip was posted I was surprised to see myself on it. I went to talk to the Project Lead to ask him about it. He told me he thought I’d want to go. There was a list of people who had requested to go. He’d put me on the list, even though I’d never made the request.
I told him I wasn’t all that eager to go, and the current roster of people meant that there would be nobody left to run things back at home. I suggested that maybe I should stay behind and keep an eye on things for him while the rest of the project leadership was in Hawaii. After all, there was still a lot of work to be done.
He told me it would be fun. I told him I didn’t think it would be.
He paused. His line of persuasion wasn’t working.
“Are you telling me that you don’t want to go on this trip?”
“It’s your decision,” I told him. “I don’t want to take someone else’s spot, if someone else wants to go. I’d be perfectly happy to stay home. But if you think it’s important to the success of the project to have me there, then I’ll go.”
“I want you to be there, but how about this. It’s probably only really important that you be there for the first week. Just make arrangements to be there for the first week, and we’ll see how things are going. If everything goes well, I’ll send someone else out after that.”
And here I am.
I’m here because I’ve been in this sort of situation before, whatever that means. Because I work well when the plan is a bit vague, or there isn’t any plan at all. Because I’ve seen it all.
And now I’m wide awake for no identifiable reason, and the clock reads 5:00am on the dot. The curtains are open. The sky is dark and full of stars, and then the stars are gone. There’s a brilliant orange flash that fills the room like a flashbulb and silhouettes the row of hotels along the beach. After the flash I see an orange glow rising into the sky, but there’s a big hotel in the way and I can’t see the mushroom cloud. I can see buildings to either side reflecting the glow, however, and I can watch the shadows shorten and I know what that means as the voice in my head calmly counts one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand, BOOM. Less than a mile away, maybe 1,000 yards.
The initial shockwave was followed by endless echos from all the hotel faces and then a grumbling, shuddering noise like the sound of a building collapsing in on itself.
And then another. And another. The explosions come faster and faster. And then the faint echo of distant shouts and screams.
“Oh, crap,” I think to myself. “I didn’t bring the right equipment for this at all.” Not, not at all. And the fact that my luggage was apparently very interesting to the TSA, who took everything out and then repacked it quite badly, is not helping. (I can’t really blame them for being fascinated by my luggage–the sorts of things I take on travel for work have been known to raise a few eyebrows, but if something is wrapped in bubble pack when they take it out of my suitcase, I’d like it to be put back in my suitcase wrapped in bubble pack again…) But I am here.
There’s no point in rushing downstairs half-clothed. I dress carefully. The electricity is still on–a blessing–and the internet is working. I consult the local map, trying to memorize where things are. I can’t find a map I can carry in my pocket.
By the time I make it outside, the streets are choked with people running away from direction of the explosions. There’s no way I can get any closer without being trampled. The sight is almost unimaginable: tens of thousands of people of every age, shape, and size, running shoulder to shoulder down the streets of Honolulu at 5:30 in the morning. And they just keep coming. There’s no way I’m going to get any closer to the center of the action on the surface streets. I’ll have to take the beach.
Of course, if you’ve been following the news, then of course you know how this all turns out, but it was a bit alarming at the time and the fact that the entire area is now cordoned off has changed my plans for the morning in a significant manner. Breakfast will have to wait.
But nothing that has happened has changed my overly melodramatic way of describing things.
