State of emergency in Vitaria!

On friday, as the east coast of the states braced itself for the arrival of hurricane Irene, the humdrum, sleepy existence of our small district, Vitaria, was also thrown into turmoil, when strong swells brought 8m waves crashing directly at our driveway! It started in the evening, we'd just finished clearing up the evening meal when the sound of the surf started to really amp up, by 8:30 pm the waves had started coming up over the beach and onto the road outside our driveway.....

Viriamu surveys the surf as it breaks at the top of our beach

Fortunately it didn't come much further than our front gate. Nevertheless we were the focus of attention for the emergency services on the island. We had the police, the mayor of Avera, the fire service, the public works people and municipal police all gathered outside our front door at some point during the night, not to mention a municipal minibus, in the event that our guests needed to be evacuated!!!! Fortunately we avoided catastrophe......

The waves drenched the road bringing with them a whole pile of ironwood tree needles

Remarkably our guests slept on, oblivious of the whole situation, but I definitely feel reassured that we're in good hands here! The island has clearly been working on their emergency action plan, maybe since our brush with cyclone Oli last year. By 6:30am on saturday morning the swell had died down a fair bit.

 

The road was closed off with diggers and workmen out front cleaning up the mess, which strangely seemed to be entirely isolated to a 20m stretch out front of our place (Hmmmmn, we're starting to wonder whether it might not be something we did!).

Fortunately, we have a barrier of ironwood trees planted along the beachfront facing our house, they clearly saved our garden from a good dousing in saltwater..........

The ironwood trees along our beach, with exposed roots thanks to the waves

Our beach is now very clean and very smooth! Good thing we managed to salvage the hammock! What can you say, island life is often quiet, but never dull!

You know you've been living on an isolated Pacific island for a while when .....

> you get excited that there are fresh carrots in the local grocery store
> you are overjoyed when some friends in Tahiti send you a care package with sponge squares and Weetabix in it (a BIG thank you to the Manate family for that!)
> your idea of a big night out is going to get 'Steack frites' at the local snack
> you blog about the Mexican soap opera that you're watching!
> you're reduced to tears (of laughter) by a BBC comedy show filmed partly in Barry (South Wales) Gavin and Stacey, because it's just so spot on, and reminds you of some reasons why living on a small Pacific island seems like a good idea (another thank you to the Mme Manate for that)

Tsunami?

Today was quite an eventful day here on our island, around 10am we got a red alert Tsunami warning, there was a siren that went off and everything! However it was not until some time after 11am that we actually got confirmation of the potential tsunami danger......there had been a reasonable sized earthquake in Samoa earlier in the morning (Samoa was the region worst hit, with a 4m wave and about 100 dead). It's a funny kind of feeling waiting for the wave to come, it was only expected to be in the region of 90cm here in Rurutu, but still we weren't quite sure whether we should pack our bags and head for the hills! My mother in law was most concerned about the bikes left out front of the house! I didn't really know what to do, my first impulse was to go down on to the beach to wait and try to take pictures. Matotea got sent home from school...
...not quite sure why, maybe so we could spend our last few moments together as a family, or for liability. Anyway as it turned out there wasn't too much to see and by 3pm we were in the clear. But it does make you wonder what you really could have done, if it had been a big one. Actually the chances are pretty slim that we'd get anything much over a couple of meters, being as we are slap bang in the middle of a fairly flat piece of ocean floor. And we can count our blessings - at least we don't live in the Tuamotus where even a 2m tsunami could be enough to cause some serious trouble. The only advice offered to those folks living on an atoll was to find the highest point possible and pray, short of shimmying up a coconut palm (which might be more hazardous than braving the tsunami) you'd be pretty hard pressed to escape......living on an island is kind of funny like that, there really is no escape, so you might just as well relax and take life as it comes!