Hawaii governor urges residents to stay home as Tsunami warning issued

Hawaii governor urges residents to stay home as Tsunami warning issuedReuters

Transcript

00:00This would be a three-foot wave riding across the top of the surf.

00:05I wanted to remind people, this is not just like a wave comes off the shore,

00:11three-foot wave, smacks down on the beach.

00:15This is a longitudinal wave with great force driving through the shoreline and into land.

00:23That's why we ask people to evacuate very far back.

00:26People ask if there was a generic way to describe how far you have to get away from the shoreline.

00:32To be absolutely safe, it's at least 4,000 feet.

00:36That's the better part.

00:38That's four-fifths of a mile, basically.

00:41That's why these inundation zones, which you can see on the map, which show red,

00:46are not just a few feet off of the shoreline.

00:49It is, again, not just a three-foot wave.

00:51It is a forceful wall of water that will move across the shoreline

00:56into the community if we ultimately get hit by this tsunami.

01:00We will get extra information as we go.

01:02It was described to us that it is impossible to predict until we get closer exactly how large the wave.

01:08It could be significantly larger than that, and it also could be smaller.

01:12Fences around, if it hits, it can dislodge trees.

01:15That's why you just can't be out there.

01:16The impact is at great speed.

01:19Any structure that gets loose and strikes an individual could take them out,

01:24and people can drown quite easily with the force of that kind of wave.

01:27So, again, people have to really distinguish the waves we are accustomed to on the coast every day versus a tsunami.

01:36It's a different beast altogether.

01:40And, of course, if it gets much larger, they do anticipate it could be larger.

01:44That's why they have multiple measurements.

01:46It's even more dangerous, even more forceful.

01:49Houses will be damaged.

01:50There will be debris all over the place if we do get a full tsunami.

01:52There will be debris all over the place if we do get a full tsunami.