There was truly no panic on our parts, but there was no dismissing that alarm either. In the aftermath of what has turned out to be quite a debacle, it’s hard to remember that, at that moment, just after 8am, we were convinced it was the real deal. G’s first comment: “Is it this year’s Nice?”. Yep, and a little bit more.
I wasn’t thinking death- yet- but sprung out of bed in about 2 seconds to take care of the three most important things in any emergency: contacts in, bra on and clean underwear. I dressed and put on sneakers, imagining I might eventually be clawing my way out of rubble. G joked about whether we had enough sunscreen on hand to protect us from what was coming (even in the face of a catastrophe, he can always make me laugh). People were gathering in the internal corridors of the hotel; we alternated between there and our bathroom.
We tried to find something on TV and eventually (8:16am...it felt like a lifetime since 8:07am) found a local station running a chyron across the top of the screen that confirmed the Emergency Alert we had received.
That was when I started thinking about what would happen next. I couldn’t imagine I had come through the Summer of No Fun just to have it end like this. I hoped and hoped- fervently- that the US had some sort of anti ballistic missile that would intercept the missile, and some part of me was thinking we might survive the next ten minutes, but I also realized that this was just the start of something very bad, and the best case was that we would be stuck in Hawaii, away from our home, for quite a while.
People were calling friends and family saying their goodbyes, which was...something I hope I’ll never see again. I squeezed G’s hand and told him we’d had a good run, and I’d do it all over again. I contemplated phoning Mom, but decided that, if the missile was intercepted, I’d be alarming her for no immediate reason. Besides, she was probably leading an aerobics class. ;-)
Someone (G? Another hotel guest?) said the missile should reach Hawaii about 15 minutes after it had been launched (the words North Korea were never spoken by anyone; they were totally unnecessary, because that’s just the reality of our world). I figured it had been launched at least a few minutes before we received the emergency alarm. By 8:25am, we were wondering what was going on, and I Googled “Emergency Alert Hawaii” and that was when I first saw three Tweets (seriously) from people I don’t know saying it was a false alarm. Could we trust them? Word quickly spread through the corridor. We returned to our room and tried to find something-anything- on TV, and at 8:28am we found this report...
...and that’s when I started to shake (and four hours later, it hasn’t stopped). G said it best: it was the first time we ever truly believed we’d be dead in just 15 minutes.
I began notifying friends and family, but couldn’t find anything firm on the internet about what had happened. Eventually I found a Mother Jones report, then a Daily Mail report and finally it was hitting the national news, with CNN being the first to offer coverage.
We could hear people on the beach yelling “All clear” and “False alarm” and emergency vehicles going down the streets sounding a short siren and then announcing through bullhorns “All clear” and “Stand down”. Still, it wasn’t until 8:50am (43 minutes after the initial alarm) that we received another Emergency Alert saying that it had been a false alarm.
I was once on a flight for business from Puerto Rico to Miami that encountered hydraulic issues and we had an emergency landing. I remember getting in my car on I-95 still shaking, surrounded by vehicles whose drivers had no idea what I had just been through. That’s kind of what this feels like. It will be discussed with outrage on the news networks until the next outrageous thing happens, and then forgotten.
By most. For those of us who went through it, it will take quite a bit longer than that. We are in our room right now, alternating between football and coverage of this event. Shaking our heads in disbelief that Trump’s first Tweet after this was about that damn book.
And willing our heart rates to settle down.