Tsunami alert tests Hawaii's preparedness

Tourists lined the lanais of high-rise hotels and sightseers clustered along Hawaii's cliffside highways to take in the spectacle of a potentially destructive tsunami that turned out to be more like an undulating tide.

Dozens of ships headed to open water, 40,000 to 50,000 locals and tourists scrambled to safety and high ground, and communities from Hilo to Waikīkī transformed into instant ghost towns yesterday as the Islands braced for a tsunami that rolled in as merely an odd ocean surge.

In two months, federal, state, county and other emergency first responders hold an annual weeklong hurricane disaster exercise and drills. This year, they will add several problems stemming from yesterday's tsunami response

All over this coastal town yesterday, people gathered at hillside vantage points — their ears to portable radios, their hands gripping binoculars — to watch a tsunami come in that some feared would rival the 1960 waves that killed 61 people in Hilo, toppled buildings and homes and swept away cars.

State Civil Defense leaders kept busy on Saturday, working around the clock trying to keep everyone safe.