Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Tsunami?

We had a few moments of excitement last night. While watcing a LAW AND ORDER re-run (actually I was doing something else and not paying much attention), the "emergency broadcast system" interrupted the program to say that we had a "tsunami warning". Say what? I have never heard of such a thing in Southern California.

We live well inland, but our son was out at a beach party. It is a popular thing for people here to have parties around fires on the beach (there are designated fire rings) after dark. Flurry of cell phone activity ensues. I was teetering on hysteria for a few moments because DS did not want to leave the beach, but he finally believed it. No more than twenty minutes after we received the call that the party had moved safely away from the beach, the warning was cancelled. So much for that beach party! Thanks God it was only a false alarm, and the good news is that the warning system would have worked in plenty of time to get people out of the affected areas. I usually wish we could afford to live closer to the beach, but what with all the recent landslides, earthquakes, and now tsunami warnings, maybe it's better that we don't.

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