2008 Woodie Awards
6.6 quake shakes Hawaii
Sharon Bernstein and John L. Mitchell-The Los Anges Times
Issue date: 10/19/06 Section: nation/world
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The magnitude 6.6 magnitude quake struck at 7:07 a.m. about 11 miles offshore from Kailua-Kona, a resort town on Hawaii's popular and sunny Kona Coast. No fatalities were reported, and most of the injuries were believed to be minor.
"My whole house collapsed," said Dennis Martin of Waimea. "The back end sank, and the porch went through the roof."
Martin, an associate pastor, was at church at the time, but his wife and two daughters were caught in bed. "They were really shaken up, but no one was hurt," he said. "It was an absolute miracle."
About 2,000 tourists were evacuated from two local hotels, said Harry Kim, mayor of the island of Hawaii. At one point during the day, about 1,000 locals and vacationers swelled the four shelters that the county had set up, but by evening only 100 remained. The rest, mostly tourists, had returned to their hotels, where they were housed in wings that had not sustained damage, Kim said.
Kim said there had been damage to "numerous homes" and that 15 schools had been damaged and would remain closed Monday.
Vanessa Garcia said she and her boys, aged 12 and 15, found the whole experience terrifying.
"It started shaking, and I called my children, and they started to cry," Garcia said, who rode out of the quake from the second floor of a house in Kohola. "I started to say my prayers, and it was still shaking. It was very, very long and violent. ... I lived in California for most of my life and never had anything like this."
The quake disrupted power 100 miles away on the island of Oahu, caused a major rockslide that closed the road to Hana on the island of Maui and snarled airports throughout the island chain. All incoming airliners managed to find an airport to land.
The quake blocked roads with rockslides, caused sinkholes to open up on several roads and damaged a number of bridges, said Rod Haraga, state transportation director. Some bridges were closed until engineers could evaluate the damage and authorities took to the airwaves to urge drivers to stay off the roads.
Further crippling the state was widespread disruption of power and telephone service, said David Curtis of the Hawaii State Civil Defense agency. Without communication, initial assessments of the damage on the Big Island were extremely difficult for state and federal emergency workers - most of whom are located on neighboring Oahu.
A crew of about 20 FEMA workers - one of whom learned about the earthquake when it caused him to fall out of his bed in Honolulu - set off in government planes for the Big Island at about 2 p.m. Sunday. FEMA put medical and urban search-and-rescue teams on alert on the West Coast.
"Right now, both the state and FEMA are trying to determine what is needed," said FEMA spokeswoman Kim Walz. "It's still an assessment stage."