Peter Liu - Disaster

Tsunami Aftermath

March 11, 2011 By Peter 2 Comments

It’s been a long couple of days. I’ve seen some disasters in my life, but nothing on the scale of what’s happening in Japan.

At around 4:30 a.m., when I got the sense we’d avoided catastrophe on the islands, I decided to get some sleep, as I had a GoToMeeting scheduled for 8:00 a.m. As it turned out, that meeting dissolved, so I continued to participate in the Twitter hashtag for a while, then grabbed the camera and went for a drive to see some of the aftermath for myself.

South Kihei Road was wet and muddy in places, but not any worse than after a big rainstorm. What struck me was how the ocean was flat calm, but would recede a long way, then come way back, almost to the road in some places. This oscillation took place in roughly 15 minute intervals.

I made my way over to Ma‘alaea Harbor, where I’d seen reports of damage. They weren’t lying. The harbor was brown with debris floating here and there, and three boats were underwater. The story I heard was that they were tied up when the ocean receded and ended up on their sides when it came back. Very sad.

Filed Under: Disaster Tagged With: #hitsunami, Hawaii, maalaea, Maui, tsunami

Fire In West Maui Mountains

June 8, 2010 By Peter 6 Comments

As I write this, there’s a fire raging in the West Maui Mountains in Ma’alaea, causing a closure of Honoapiilani Highway and the evacuation of workers at the Kaheawa Wind Farm.

From our point of view at the beach near our house in Kihei, it looks pretty massive. I saw it at the foot of the mountains making its way up when I was driving on the Mokulele this morning on my way to a meeting in Kula, and by the time I left to come down the mountain a couple of hours later, it had spread tremendously.

Here’s to hoping they put it out soon, there are no injuries, our wind farm survives and they find the cause.

Filed Under: Disaster, Hawaii, Maui Tagged With: fire, Hawaii, maalaea, Maui, west maui mountains

Where Is The Outrage

May 27, 2010 By Peter Leave a Comment

I’m sickened by the oil spill in the Gulf, and I’m sure you are too. I hear from people close by that people are running around trying to do something, but of course, we haven’t seen any results. And now we’ve gone from bad to worse with the toxic soup that’s been created with all the chemicals added to the mixture to “disperse” the oil. It’s dispersed alright, into tiny globules of who-knows-what that pass right through fish.

I’m not one who tolerates feeling helpless very well, but I don’t know what else to feel, or do. We seem to have accepted the risks of drilling in deep water and the fact that this kind of thing can happen from time to time. So we’re resigned when we should be outraged.

Unacceptable.